health. So
Mr. Sylvester who denies her nothing, promised us horses and the groom,
and as a preparation for acquitting myself with credit, has sent me to
one of the finest riding academies in the city. It was here I met Miss
Stuyvesant. She is a small interesting-looking girl whose chief beauty
lies in her expression which is certainly very charming. I was conscious
of a calm and satisfied feeling the moment I saw her. Her eyes which are
raised with a certain appeal to your face, are blue, while her lips that
break into smiles only at rare moments, are rosy and delicately curved.
In her riding-habit she looks like a child, but when dressed for the
street she surprises you with the reserved and womanly air with which
she carries her proud head. Altogether she is a sweet study to me,
alluring me with her glance yet awing me by her dainty ladyhood, a
ladyhood too unconscious to be affected and yet so completely a part of
her whole delicate being, that you could as soon dissociate the bloom
from the rose, as the air of highborn reserve, from this sweet scion of
one of New York's oldest families.

"I was mounting my horse when our eyes first met, and I never shall
forget her look of delighted surprise. Did she recognize in me the
friend I now hope to become? Later we were introduced by Mr. Sylvester
who had been so kind as to accompany me that day. The way in which he
said to her, 'This is Paula,' proved that I was no new topic of
conversation between them, and indeed she afterwards explained to me
that she had been forewarned of my arrival during an afternoon call at
his house. There was in this first interview none of the unnecessary
gush which you have so often reprobated as childish; indeed Miss
Stuyvesant is not a person with whom one would presume to be familiar,
nor was it till we had met several times that any acknowledgement was
made of the mutual interest with which we found ourselves inspired.
Cousin Ona to whom I had naturally spoken of the little lady, wished me
to cultivate her acquaintance more assiduously, but I knew that if I had
excited in her the same interest she had awakened in me, this would not
be necessary; our friendship would grow of itself and blossom without
any hot-house forcing. And so it did. One day she came to the
riding-school with her eyes like stars and her cheeks like the oleanders
in your sitting-room. Her brightness was so contagious, I stepped up to
her. But she greeted me with almost