trembling with its rich embroidery; and near it, as if in contrast, on
a dress-stand, was a velvet robe, falling in soft, luxurious folds.
Flowers, caps, _coiffures_ of various descriptions, peeped out of
sundry boxes, and on a commode table was an open _ecrin_ whose
sparkling, costly contents dazzled the eyes.

"Hey-day!" I exclaimed to my friend, as she advanced to meet me,
"what's the meaning of all this splendor?"

"I was just on the point of sending for you," she replied
laughingly--"Madame M---- has sent home these lovely things for Lillie
and I--and I want your opinion upon them."

"And you are really going to re-enter society?" I asked.

"Lillie is eighteen this winter, you know," was my gentle friend's
reply. "Who would have thought time could have flown around so
quickly. Mr. Mason is very anxious she should make her _entree_ this
season. You can scarcely fancy how disagreeable it is to me, but I
must not be selfish. I cannot always have her with me."

"And you, like a good mother," I said, "will throw aside your love for
retirement and accompany her?"

"Certainly," replied Agnes eagerly, and she added with a slight
expression of feeling which I well understood--"I will watch over her,
for she will need my careful love now even more than in childhood."

"Where is the pretty cause of all this anxiety and attention?" I
inquired.

"Charlie would not dress for his morning walk," answered the mother,
"unless sister Lillie assisted in the robing of the young tyrant, so
she is in the nursery."

We inspected the different robes and gay things spread out so
temptingly before us, and grew femininely eloquent over these
beautiful trifles, and were most earnestly engaged in admiring the
_parure_ of brilliant diamonds, and the spotless pearls, with which
the fond, proud father and husband had presented them that morning,
when a slight tap was heard at the door, and our pet Lillie entered. A
bright-eyed, light-hearted creature is Lillie Mason--a sunbeam to her
home. She ran up to me with affectionate greetings, and united in our
raptures over the glittering _bijouterie_.

"How will you like this new life, Lillie?" I asked, as the lovely girl
threw herself on a low _marchepied_ at our feet, as if wearied of the
pretty things.

"I can scarcely tell," she replied, and she rested her head on her
mother's lap, whose hand parted the clustering ringlets on the fair,
smooth brow, while Lillie's eyes looked up most lov