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 needn't be always fifteen, as Lady 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.

{Lady Wortley Montague = Lady Mary Wortley Montague (1689-1762),
English essayist and letter-writer}

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 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 independent, 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.

{managing = manipulative}

"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 d