to
the fair Mary, unless she would consent to forego the luxuries of
fashionable life, and follow his fortunes through the perils and
vicissitudes of an Indian frontier. She stood out to the last, hoping
the stalwart colonel would yield to her eloquent pleadings, and consent
to make his abode in New Orleans; for she conceived that brother
Augustus, having arrived at the sober age of thirty, would never marry,
and it would be the finest idea in the world for him to relinquish the
splendid estate he had acquired by his own untiring exertions, to the
hands of Col. Edmunds, while she, as the worthy colonel's most estimable
consort, would condescend to assume the direction of the servants and
household affairs, and Augustus could thus live wholly at his ease,
without a worldly care to distract his breast. What an affectionate,
self-sacrificing sister would she be, thus kindly to relieve her brother
at her own expense! But, just as this plan began to ripen for execution,
she was counter-plotted, or fancied herself to be, which led to the same
denouement. Winnie Morris came to pass a vacation with her brother,
Wayland, and the fore-doomed bachelor, Augustus Lester, most audaciously
dared to fall in love with the cackling girl. So Miss Mary declared; and
to remain in her brother's mansion, where she had hitherto exercised
unlimited sway, under such a little minx of a mistress, was too much for
human nature to endure; so, all on a sudden, she yielded in full to the
majestic colonel's wishes, and "cut sticks" for Texas, flying, as many
of us often do, from an imaginary evil, and leaving behind poor little
Winnie, innocent and unsuspecting as a lamb, with the great coffee-urn
in her trembling hand. How long the fair girl remained thus innocent and
unsuspecting, we are yet to know.

"So you are from New Orleans, Col. Edmunds," remarked Mrs. Camford. "I
do not recollect of ever having met you there; but to see any person
from our former home, though personally strangers, affords us pleasure
and gratification."

"I have only resided in New Orleans about six months, madam," returned
Col. Edmunds; "the most of my life has been spent in camp and field."

"My husband is a soldier," said Mrs. Edmunds, "and we are now on our way
to the Indian frontier."

"Indeed! and how do you think you will relish frontier life?" asked Mrs.
Camford.

"O, I shall be contented anywhere with my husband!"

"Just married, madam, and desperately in lov