, I shall certainly say it was you."

Mrs. Littlefield treated her young friend with great kindness. She was a
good-natured, childless matron. She found Lizzie very ignorant and very
pretty. She was glad to have so great a beauty and so many lions to
show.

One evening Lizzie went to her room with one of the maids, carrying half
a dozen candles between them. Heaven forbid that I should cross that
virgin threshold--for the present! But we will wait. We will allow them
two hours. At the end of that time, having gently knocked, we will enter
the sanctuary. Glory of glories! The faithful attendant has done her
work. Our lady is robed, crowned, ready for worshippers.

I trust I shall not be held to a minute description of our dear Lizzie's
person and costume. Who is so great a recluse as never to have beheld
young ladyhood in full dress? Many of us have sisters and daughters. Not
a few of us, I hope, have female connections of another degree, yet no
less dear. Others have looking-glasses. I give you my word for it that
Elizabeth made as pretty a show as it is possible to see. She was of
course well-dressed. Her skirt was of voluminous white, puffed and
trimmed in wondrous sort. Her hair was profusely ornamented with curls
and braids of its own rich substance. From her waist depended a ribbon,
broad and blue. White with coral ornaments, as she wrote to Jack in the
course of the week. Coral ornaments, forsooth! And pray, Miss, what of
the other jewels with which your person was decorated,--the rubies,
pearls, and sapphires? One by one Lizzie assumes her modest gimcracks:
her bracelet, her gloves, her handkerchief, her fan, and then--her
smile. Ah, that strange crowning smile!

An hour later, in Mrs. Littlefield's pretty drawing-room, amid music,
lights, and talk, Miss Crowe was sweeping a grand curtsy before a tall,
sallow man, whose name she caught from her hostess's redundant murmur as
Bruce. Five minutes later, when the honest matron gave a glance at her
newly started enterprise from the other side of the room, she said to
herself that really, for a plain country-girl, Miss Crowe did this kind
of thing very well. Her next glimpse of the couple showed them whirling
round the room to the crashing thrum of the piano. At eleven o'clock she
beheld them linked by their finger-tips in the dazzling mazes of the
reel. At half-past eleven she discerned them charging shoulder to
shoulder in the serried columns of the Lancers. At mi