rnard, introduced by Mr. Geordie, made his bow to the Colonel and
his lady and to Miss Matilda, from whom he got a particularly gracious
curtsy, and then began looking about him for acquaintances. He found two
or three faces he knew,--many more strangers. There was Silas
Peckham,--there was no mistaking him; there was the inelastic amplitude
of Mrs. Peckham; few of the Apollinean girls, of course, they not being
recognized members of society,--but there is one with the flame in her
cheeks and the fire in her eyes, the girl of vigorous tints and emphatic
outlines, whom we saw entering the schoolroom the other day. Old Judge
Thornton has his eyes on her, and the Colonel steals a look every now and
then at the red brooch which lifts itself so superbly into the light, as
if he thought it a wonderfully becoming ornament. Mr. Bernard himself
was not displeased with the general effect of the rich-blooded
schoolgirl, as she stood under the bright lamps, fanning herself in the
warm, languid air, fixed in a kind of passionate surprise at the new life
which seemed to be flowering out in her consciousness. Perhaps he looked
at her somewhat steadily, as some others had done; at any rate, she
seemed to feel that she was looked at, as people often do, and, turning
her eyes suddenly on him, caught his own on her face, gave him a
half-bashful smile, and threw in a blush involuntarily which made it more
charming.

"What can I do better," he said to himself, "than have a dance with Rosa
Milburn?" So he carried his handsome pupil into the next room and took
his place with her in a cotillon. Whether the breath of the Goddess of
Love could intoxicate like the cup of Circe,--whether a woman is ever
phosphorescent with the luminous vapor of life that she exhales,--these
and other questions which relate to occult influences exercised by
certain women we will not now discuss. It is enough that Mr. Bernard was
sensible of a strange fascination, not wholly new to him, nor
unprecedented in the history of human experience, but always a revelation
when it comes over us for the first or the hundredth time, so pale is the
most recent memory by the side of the passing moment with the flush of
any new-born passion on its cheek. Remember that Nature makes every man
love all women, and trusts the trivial matter of special choice to the
commonest accident.

If Mr. Bernard had had nothing to distract his attention, he might have
thought too much abou