"Oh! that at least. Some persons affirm that she is semi-royal. The country is full of broken-down royalty and nobility. Do you think she has an aris tocratic air?" "Not in the least-her ears are too small." "Why, my dear, that is the very symbol of nobility! When my Aunt Harding was in Naples, she knew the Duke of Montecarbana, intimately; and she says he had the smallest ears she ever beheld on a human being. The Montecarbanas are a family as old as the ruins of Paestum, they say." "Well, to my notion, nobility and teaching little girls French and Italian, and their gammes, have very little in common. I had thought Mr. Shoreham an admirer of Miss Monson's." Now, unfortunately, my mistress overheard this remark. Her feelings were just in that agitated state to take the alarm, and she determined to flirt with a young man of the name of Thurston, with a view to awaken Betts's jealousy, if he had any, and to give vent to her own spleen. This Tom Thurston was one of those tall, good-looking young fellows who come from, nobody knows where, get into society, nobody knows how, and live on, nobody knows what. It was pretty generally understood that he was on the look-out for a rich wife, and encouragement from Julia Monson was not likely to be disregarded by such a person. To own the truth, my mistress carried matters much too far-so far, indeed, as to attract attention from every body but those most concerned; viz. her own mother and Betts Shoreham. Although elderly ladies play cards very little, just now, in American society, or, indeed, in any other, they have their inducements for rendering the well-known office of matron, at a ball, a mere sinecure. Mrs. Monson, too, was an indulgent mother, and seldom saw any thing very wrong in her own children. Julia, in the main, had sufficient retenue, and a suspicion of her want of discretion on this point, was one of the last things that would cross the fond parent's mind at Mrs. Leamington's ball. Others, however, were less confiding. had taken his leave at Mrs. Leamington's door, as uncertain as ever whether or not to impute envy to a being who, in all other respects, seemed to him to be faultless. He had to retire to an uneasy pillow, undetermined whether to pursue his original intention of making the poor friendless French girl independant, by an offer of his hand, or whether to decide that her amiable and gentle qualities were all seeming, and that she was not what she appeared to be. Betts Shoreham owed his distrust to national prejudice, and well was he paid for entertaining so vile a companion. Had Mademoiselle Hennequin been an American girl, he would not have thought a second time of the emotion she had betrayed in regarding my beauties; but he had been taught to believe all French women managing and hypocritical; a notion that the experience of a young man in Paris would not be very likely to destroy. "Well,” cried John Monson, as the carriage drew from Mrs. Leamington's door, "this is the last ball I shall go to in New York;" which declaration he repeated twenty times that season, and as often broke. "What is the matter now, Jack?" demanded the father. "I found it very pleasant-six or seven of us old fellows made a very agreeable evening of it." "Yes, I dare say, sir; but you were not compelled to dance in a room eighteen by twenty-four, with a hundred people treading on your toes, or brushing their heads in your face." "Jack can find no room for dancing since the great ball of the Salle de l'Opera, at Paris," observed the mother smiling. "I hope you enjoyed yourself better, Julia?" My mistress started; then she answered with a sort of hysterical glee "Oh! I have found the evening delightful, ma'am. I could have remained two hours longer." "And you, Mademoiselle Hennequin; I hope you, too, were agreeably entertained?" The governess answered meekly, and with a slight tremor in her voice. "Certainly, madame," she said, "I have enjoyed ob-myself; though dancing always seems an amusement I have no right to share in." "Your daughter is in high spirits to-night," served a single lady of a certain age, who was sitting near Mrs. Monson; "I do not remember to have ever seen her so gay." "Yes, dear girl, she is happy,"-poor Julia was any thing but that, just then-" but youth is the time for happiness, if it is ever to come in this life." "Is Miss Monson addicted to such very high spirits?" continued one, who was resolute to torment, and vexed that the mother could not be sufficiently alarmed to look around. Always-when in agreeable company. I think it a great happiness, ma'am, to possess good spirits." "No doubt-yet one need n't be always fifteen, as Lady Mary Wortley Montague said," muttered the other, giving up the point, and changing her seat, in order that she might speak her mind more freely into the ear of a congenial spirit. Half an hour later we were all in the carriages, again, on our way home; all, but Betts Shoreham, I should say, for having seen the ladies cloaked, he There was some little embarrassment, and I could perceive an impulse in Julia to press nearer to her rival, as if impelled by a generous wish to manifest her sympathy. But Tom's protests soon silenced every thing else, and we alighted, and soon went to rest. The next morning Julia sent for me down to be exhibited to one or two friends, my fame having spread in consequence of my late appearance. I was praised, kissed, called a pretty dear, and extolled like a spoiled child, though Miss W. did not fail to carry the intelligence, far and near, that Miss Monson's much-talked-of pocket-handkerchief was nothing after all but the thing Miss Halfacre had brought out the night of the day her father had stopped payment. Some even began to nick-name me the insolvent pocket-handkerchief. I thought Julia sad, after her friends had all left her. I lay neglected on a sofa, and the pretty girl's brow became thoughtful. Of a sudden she was aroused from a brown study-reflective mood, perhaps, would be a more select phrase-by the unexpected appearance of young Thurston. There was a sort of "ah! have I caught you alone" expression about this adventurer's eye, even while he was making his bow, that struck me. I looked for great events, nor was I altogether disappointed. In one minute he was seated at Julia's side, on the same sofa, and within two feet of her; in two more he had brought in play his usual tricks of flattery. My mistress listened languidly, and yet not altogether without interest. She was piqued at Betts Shoreham's indifference, had known her present admirer several months, if dancing in the same set can be called knowing, and had never been made love to before, at least in a manner so direct and unequivocal. The young man had tact enough to discover that he had an advantage, and fearful that some one might come in and interrupt the tête à tête, he magnanimously resolved to throw all on a single cast, and come to the point at once. "I think, Miss Monson," he continued, after a very beautiful specimen of rigmarole in the way of lovemaking, a rigmarole that might have very fairly figured in an editor's law and logic, after he had been beaten in a libel suit, "I think, Miss Monson, you cannot have overlooked the very particular attentions I have endeavored to pay you, ever since I have been so fortunate as to have made your acquaintance?" "I-Upon my word, Mr. Thurston, I am not at all conscious of having been the object of any such attentions!" "No? That is ever the way with the innocent and single-minded! This is what we sincere and diffident men have to contend with in affairs of the heart. Our bosoms may be torn with ten thousand distracting cares, and yet the modesty of a truly virtuous female heart shall be so absorbed in its own placid serenity as to be indifferent to the pangs it is unconsciously inflicting!" and was near getting into a part of the subject that might not have been so apposite, but retreated in time. By way of climax, the lover laid his hand on me, and raised me to his eyes in an abstracted manner, as if unconscious of what he was doing, and wanted to brush away a tear. "What a confounded rich old fellow the father must be," thought Tom, "to give her such pockethandkerchiefs!" I felt like a wren that escapes from the hawk when the rogue laid me down. Alas! Poor Julia was the dupe of all this acting. Totally unpracticed herself, abandoned by the usages of the society in which she had been educated very much to the artifices of any fortune-hunter, and vexed with Betts Shoreham, she was in the worst possible frame of mind to resist such eloquence and love. She had seen Tom at all the balls in the best houses, found no fault with his exterior and manners, both of which were fashionable and showy, and now discovered that he had a most sympathetic heart, over which, unknown to herself, she had obtained a very unlimited control. "You do not answer me, Miss Monson," continued Tom, peeping out at one side of me, for I was still at his eyes-" you do not answer me, cruel, inexorable girl!" "What would you have me say, Mr. Thurston?" "Say yes, dearest, loveliest, most perfect being of the whole human family." "Yes, then; if that will relieve your mind, it is a relief very easily bestowed." Now, Tom Thurston was as skilled in a fortunehunter's wiles as Napoleon was in military strategy. He saw he had obtained an immense advantage for the future, and he forbore to press the matter any further at the moment. The "yes" had been uttered more in pleasantry than with any other feeling, but, by holding it in reserve, presuming on it gradually, and using it in a crisis, it might be worth—“ let me see," calculated Tom, as he went whistling down "Mr. Thurston, your language is strong-and-a Broadway, "that 'yes' may be made to yield at least little-a little unintelligible." a cool $100,000. There are John, this girl, and two little ones. Old Monson is worth every dollar of $700,000-none of your skyrockets, but a known, old fortune, in substantial houses and lands-let us suppose the old woman outlive him, and that she gets her full thirds; that will leave $466,660. Perhaps John may get a couple of hundred thousand, and even then each of the girls will have $88,888. If one of the little things should happen to die, and there's lots of scarlet fever about, why that would fetch it up at once to a round hundred thousand. I don't think the old woman would be likely to marry again at her time of life. One must n't calculate too confidently on that, however, as I would have her myself for half of such thirds." "I dare say-ma'am-I never expect to be intelligible again. When the heart is oppressed with unutterable anguish, condemned to conceal that passion which is at once the torment and delight of life'-when 'his lip, the ruby harbinger of joy, lies pale and cold, the miserable appendage of a mang-' that is, Miss Monson, I mean to say, when all our faculties are engrossed by one dear object we are often incoherent and mysterious, as a matter of course." Tom Thurston came very near wrecking himself on the quicksands of the romantic school. He had begun to quote from a speech delivered by Gouverneur Morris, on the subject of the right of deposit at New Orleans, and which he had spoken at college, [To be concluded in our next. OUR LIDA, OR THE MOCK MARRIAGE. BY MRS. ANN S. STEPHENS. "Scold, scold, thump, thump, scold, scold away! NONSENSE! I only wish the writer of those lines had been at our cottage by the old bridge on washingdays, it would have made him sing other words to the same lively air, or I am sadly mistaken. Washing-day! why it was the happiest twelve hours of the week to 66 us children." We could scarcely sleep all the night before from fervent anticipations of the frolic which it brought. It was astonishing how our intellects were sharpened, and our ingenuity brought in force to devise ways and means for escaping school on that particular morning. How resolutely we compelled a healthy appetite to refuse breakfast; what feverish cheeks we borrowed from the rude oak-leaves that lay concealed beneath our pillows; what headaches we pleaded-and how very desperate all our symptoms were just before the tones of that academy bell came sweeping down from school hill. It was a new bell, and the man always rang it uncommonly long and loud on Monday morning, to begin the week with a flourish, he said, but to us it seemed an instance of cruel, personal spite to ward three innocent little girls that had never done him the least harm in the world. Though determined invalids, we were always out of bed immediately after daylight on a washing-day; and one face at least might always be seen peeping eagerly through our low chamber window. We had secretly pushed back the old honeysuckle vine just far enough to leave a single pane of glass uncovered, and that commanded a view of the foot-path where our washerwoman was always first seen coming through the pine woods-a blessing on her short scarlet cloak, she always wore it, summer and winter. It had been her grandmother's; but in form and material would be the height of fashion in Broadway this very winter. Bless the old cardinal once again! It has made my heart leap many a fine summer morning to see its first brilliant gleam through the pine boughs. A nice tidy old creature was our washerwoman, one that an artist would have sketched in spite of himself, had he seen her wending along that shady path, in the cool morning, with a kerchief of brilliant cotton passed neatly over her cap, and tied beneath the chin. Gray or Page would have taken a fancy to the old woman, even before her sad, mild face came in view. There was something picturesque about her raiment, and her movements were in fine keeping with the dewy quietude reposing among the dark green foliage through which she was wholly revealed, or seen only by glimpses, as she came toward the cottage. But there was sometimes another object which almost every young man of taste, even though not an artist, would have fancied-for Lida was possessed of a beauty so soft and delicate, that it seemed natural to the green woods, almost as the flowers that spring to life and perish there. Lida-sweet. pretty Lida-as we always called her, was a girl of some ten years old, when I could remember her coming to the house with her mother-and she is almost the first object that I can remember—for she was just the creature to fasten herself on the mind of a child whose instinct it was to love the beautiful, and be grateful for kindness. Lida came with her mother every week for many a year; and it was to her that our washing-day owed half its cheerfulness. The old woman brought her girl to "take care of the children," she said; and such care as she took to make us happy, was never so successfully exerted by mortal being before or since. "We First she would go to our mother with her sweet coaxing smile, and plead for a day at home. should be no trouble," she said, "none in the world; she would keep us out in the pine woods, or down by the river side, with her mother, all day long. We should certainly wear our sun-bonnets, and keep our shoes on; should never go down to the water unless she were with us, nor climb the rocks to tear our dresses, nor carry turf in our aprons to dam up the spring, as we had done once when company was expected. In short, she promised all sorts of good behavior for us; and to do ourselves justice, we seldom brought her into disgrace by very glaring misconduct. In truth, we found the young girl so much more agreeable than mischief-so womanly in her control over our wild spirits, and yet so joyously childlike, that we had little desire to go beyond her presence. Lida usually prevailed, and always, as our mother insisted, for the last time. The next week we should certainly go to school. No matter, we were very willing to let the morrow provide for itself; besides, we had heard that same old promise so often before, that consent would have seemed unnatural without it. Half-way between our house and the falls, which our readers will find described in the story of " Malina Gray," was a little green hollow; a brooklet ran through it in the spring season, and even when there was no water, a thousand blue-eyed violets shed an azure tinge along the moist and rich grass which formed its bed; while in July and August the upper curve of the bank was covered with golden buttercups; and a few strawberries might be found where the sunshine came most frequently, embedded like rubies in the velvet grass. One extremity of this hollow sloped gently down to the river's brink, while the upper end was guarded by a singular old buttonwood tree. The rude trunk rose upward four or five feet, when it made a sudden bend, like the elbow of a man's arm, ran parallel with the earth, perhaps three feet more, and then shot toward the sky, straight as an arrow, and its smooth, white stem, and fantastic boughs, which loomed high up in the air, seemed the more picturesque because it was the only tree of that species in the neighborhood. It was beneath this old tree that our washerwoman performed her duty, from the first starting of the grass in spring till the frost of an Indian summer rendered it crisp beneath her feet. In a tiny hollow, just below the roots, she built her fire, an iron grapple secured her hook to that portion of the trunk which formed a line above it, and a huge brass-kettle swung all day long over the cheerful blaze, with the smoke curling round it and forming fantastic wreaths among the broad leaves and tassellike balls overhead. The droll-looking old tree would have formed a scanty shadow to protect our kind old woman from the sun; but just beyond it, on the level ground, stood a huge white pine and a hemlock, with the branches interlaced and covered with foliage so thick that it seemed impossible for the sunshine ever to reach the moss which grew underneath. It was a pleasant sight when that nice old woman took her stand at the wash-tub, within the shadow flung from this group of trees. The red cloak lay folded on the moss near by; the sleeves of her striped short-gown were carefully rolled up; and the snow-white border of her cap rose and fell with the motion of her head, while her hands passed with a constant, but sometimes feeble motion, up and down her wash-board. There the old woman was, in the quiet shade, all day long hard at work, and with a tranquil melancholy hanging about her which must have originated in the more tearful sorrow of her early life. How kind and patient she was-always smiling indulgently at our mischievous pranks, and thanking us every time we brought her a stick of drift-wood or a cup of water from the spring, like a broken-down gentlewoman as she was; how good naturedly she prepared the smallest sized tub of her set that we might wash out the pocket-handkerchiefs and muslins. She would smile to see how busy we became, how earnestly we scattered the white foam about, and with what desperate energy we wrung the bits of muslin and tiny ruffles in imitation of herself when she prepared a sheet or tablecloth for the boilingkettle. It was seldom that our industry outlived the thousand tiny bubbles that rose and broke with a rainbow tinge amid the snowy foam which filled our tub; before we could get a fair view of the water underneath some new freak always carried us off into the woods in search of birds' nests, or young wintergreen. We became very thirsty and wanted drink, or had taken a decided fancy to search for strawberries on the knoll, or gather peppermint from the hollow. But the old woman did not scold us, though we tired of our usefulness ever so soon; she was always ready to indulge us over again, and if we insisted on spreading her clothes on the grass, toward sunset, she never made any objection, though it always gave her additional trouble when she was worn out with labor. But we loved the poor washerwoman, and would run to the house after luncheon for her half a dozen times in the day. We always kept her fire a blaze from the driftwood which lodged on the river brink; and when nightfall came, and her task was done, there was always a spirited run from the grassy slope, where the clothes were dried, to the pine shade; and she who carried the washerwoman's cloak back, was a happy girl, indeed. Then came the buttered muffin, and strong tea, which was provided for her comfort in the house. How we loved to climb up the back of her chair, and study the tea-grounds in the bottom of her cup. Such castles, and serpents, and rings, to say nothing of the birds and wild animals as we saw there, was a perfect miracle. The fortunes always came true; we were to get all the "credit marks" during the week; be very good children, and not say a single angry or naughty word for a long time; she saw that in the cup-with presents and all sorts of pretty things-and the words wrought out their own prophecy with us. There was always a parcel, containing various small papers of tea, sugar, and other groceries, laid on a corner of the table just before the washerwoman went home. And when our mother gave her the money due for her work, and pointed to the parcel, she would drop a curtsy, fold the gift under her cloak, and depart without speaking a word; but some time in the week Lida always came with a basket of wild fruit, a bouquet of flowers, or, perhaps, a quantity of young wintergreen and sassafras bark, just enough to exhibit a grateful feeling, and an honest desire to relieve herself from obligation. A change fell upon our washing-days; the old woman came as usual, but, alas! Lida, dear Lida, no longer helped us to gather sticks from the drift heaps, or allowed her ringing laugh to set the birds a chirping, from sympathy, in the pine woods. Lida was an apprentice now-learning a milliner's trade on Falls Hill. It was a sad loss to us. We went down to the hollow two or three days after her desertion, with a desperate resolution to be happy in spite of her absence. We laughed louder than ever; ran races like so many greyhounds; frightened the pinfishes with pebble-stones; and tried every expedient to make the day seem natural; but it was like dancing without music, or a green flower with the sunshine excluded. It was a disappointment to us that Lida never came through the pine woods to her work. She lived in a little one-story house close behind Castle Rock. It was a solitary and beautiful spot, far from any highway; and Lida went to Falls Hill through a footpath which ran across the pasture lots, spreading away from the high banks which formed our valley. But sometimes the young girl would start early, and come with her mother for a few moments Monday mornings; but she seemed more thoughtful than formerly, and there was something peculiarly sweet in her smile, which was more beautiful even than her pure, bird-like laugh. Her complexion settled into that clear pearly white which carries the idea of mental purity with it, while it indicates perfect health quite as truly as the richest bloom. Her eyes were very changeable, and shaded by the longest and most jetty lashes you ever saw; while her little mouth was bright and red as a ripe strawberry. When she smiled much, a dimple settled on her cheek and round her mouth, like the shadow of a honey-bee when hovering around a lily; and when Lida was seventeen, and had begun her apprenticeship, it was pleasant to observe how lovely the child had become as she approached the threshold of womanhood. The milliner's shop where Lida worked, was in the second story of a dry-goods store, near the Episcopal church. There were two rooms in front, separated by a narrow entry; and as Miss Smith, the milliner, always took a remarkable fancy for fresh air whenever lawyer Gilbert was in the opposite room, and insisted that the door should be left open, Lida was sometimes hours together that she could not lift her eyes without knowing that a young man, rather handsome, and with singularly fine eyes, sat within the adjoining room; though she never looked directly at him, or could see the least indication that he took any advantage of Miss Smith's liberality regarding the door. Our Miss Smith was a town-bred, dashing milliner, rather social, and ready to impart information regarding former conquests in town, even to her apprentice girls, so long as they were content to admire and wonder at a respectful distance; but amid all her condescension she never once allowed " Lida" to forget the immeasurable distance that existed between a bleach-box and a wash-tub. She sat before her two apprentice girls, with one foot resting on the top of a bonnet-block, twisting up little bows of ribbon, and admiring the effect, like Calypso among her nymphs-that is, supposing the goddess had ever condescended to become useful without the least shadow of necessity, as Miss Smith affirmed was the case with herself. Sometimes the lady would quietly steal a glance through her black ringlets to observe if the lawyer were remarking the elegance of her position; and as the girls seldom lifted their eyes in that direction, it was easy to indicate the force of her charms by exclamations of "Dear me! I wonder why Mr. Gilbert is always looking this way! What can he find so interesting? I really wish he would not sit so exactly against the door!" Had the girls looked toward the lawyer's office at such times, they would have seen him tranquilly poring over a very new volume in paper binding, with his back toward the door, his chair balanced on two legs, and his feet resting on the edge of a table covered with law books in sheepskin backs, perfectly untarnished, a pair of boxing-gloves, a flute, quantities of writing-paper, and pens without number. If Mr. Gilbert really was attracted by the bold, black eyes which were so often bent upon him, or the beauty of a neck more than usually exposed when the weather was warm enough for doors to be left open, he was enough of a lawyer to avoid the observation of witnesses to his delinquencies; and though Miss Smith's evidence passed very well before her elder apprentice, and dear, unsophisticated Lida, it was good for nothing in a court of law, and no damages were likely to follow. It would have been a very unprincipled thing in the young lawyer, had the deep flounces and pretty caps, which Miss Smith set for him, taken effect-for he was already engaged to a young lady who had just returned from boarding-school in New Haven; and the fine old homestead, which stood a little back from the church, embowered in a grove of oaks, and with an old-fashioned flower-garden attached, was at that very moment tumultuous with the noise of workmen who were preparing it for the reception of a bride-lawyer Gilbert's bride. Once or twice Mr. Gilbert did actually lift his eyes from the paper-bound volume, when his position admitted of the effort without too much trouble, and looked earnestly into the milliner's room; but as Miss Smith leaned her head, and cast a side glance through the interstice thus made between two of her longest curls, she saw that his eyes were fixed, not on her, but on the drooping lids and dark lashes of Lida, the washerwoman's daughter. He might well gaze on the innocent picture of that young girl, as she sat on a low stool, bending over her work with her dark hair twisted in a single massive braid around her finely moulded head, her tiny foot creeping out from the folds of her calico dress, and her small hand fluttering about the rosecolored silk she was sewing, like a bird coquetting with a flower. And the milliner might, indeed, experience an uncomfortable sensation as she turned her kindling eyes on the unconscious possessor of so much loveliness-especially as lawyer Gilbert never turned a page that afternoon without stealing a look at the gentle girl from over the top of his volume. The next morning Lida was banished to a front window directly out of range with the door. The prettiest prospect imaginable lay before it; and the poor girl was delighted with the change. Bred to the fields as she had been, it was so pleasant to look up from her work now and then, and rest her aching eyes with a glance at the green trees, and the cool blue sky beyond. She was very grateful for the change in her position, and thanked the milliner so sweetly again and again, that the lady really began to applaud herself for having done a kind action-a sensation which, from its extreme novelty, must have been exceedingly agreeable, Directly before Lida's window was a closely trampled greensward, divided by the highway as it curved up from the valley. Opposite stood a huge willow tree, with a profusion of delicate foliage dropping over its heavy branches to the ground. Be│hind this tree was a two-story house, white as a snow |