dsomest love of a fairy knight that ever jingled
spurs, or sighed at the feet of beauty. He had come to court evidently
with the "highest recommendations" to the king, such as would have
procured him immediate access into the first "circles," even in
Philadelphia, where society lives behind barred doors, and goes about
armed cap-a-pie against encroachment or intrusion. He had been at once
received at the royal table, and a splendid suite of apartments had
been assigned him in the palace itself. Such extraordinary attentions
from the imperial family, of course, made the stranger a favorite and
a welcome guest wherever he appeared; and there was not a lady at
court who would not have given her eyes--if it would not have spoiled
her beauty--for a smile from his magnificent mouth.

It was discovered, however, at a very early stage of the proceedings,
that the chief object of the prince's admiration was the lady Dewbell,
who, proud as she was, could not help feeling flattered by the evident
and special devotion of one for whom the whole of her sex were dying.
Sir Timothy Lawn, who, from pique or melancholy, or from some unknown
cause, had left the court the very day after the arrival of the new
prince, was not entirely forgotten, but was laid away carefully on a
back shelf of her heart; and the lady Dewbell never had been so
beautiful, so fascinating, so joyous and irresistible. Courts are as
fickle as coquettes; and before the month had passed, in a series of
brilliant _fetes_ and entertainments, at all of which the prince and
princess were the reigning toast, it was regarded as a settled thing
that there would, ere the maple leaves grew red in the dying gaze of
the year, be a royal marriage in Fairyland.

But while to all around the beautiful Dewbell was ever the same
careless, saucy and happy creature as ever, in her heart she nursed a
bitter sorrow. After many and severe struggles, she was forced at last
to make to herself the humiliating acknowledgment that she deeply and
truly loved Sir Timothy Lawn, that noble and chivalric spirit, whom
her unworthy trifling had driven--so her frightened heart interpreted
it--in disgust from her. Compelled in common courtesy to receive the
devoted attentions of the stranger prince, and to hear every day and
every hour repeated the earnest solicitations of her father that she
should school herself to regard the stranger as her future husband,
her little fairy heart was quite broken wi