er side, yet more sorry when,
by an easy transition, he passed on to Flora's, and the circle around
her, from old habit, made room for him to pass. He did not stay there
long, though--only long enough to make future arrangements, I
suppose--and then, for some time, I lost sight of him.

I had been driving heavily through a quadrille in the society of a very
foolish virgin, whose ideas of past, present, and future seemed bounded
by the last Opera, which she had and I had not seen. A horror of great
dullness had fallen upon me, and I went out to restore the tone of my
depressed spirits by a libation, wherein I devoted, solemnly, my late
partner to the infernal gods. When I returned they were playing "The
Olga," and Flora was whirling round on Guy Livingstone's arm.

Among her many perilous fascinations, have I ever mentioned her
wonderful waltzing? She was as untiring as an Alme; and when once fairly
launched with a steerer who could do her justice, had a sway with
her--to use an Americanism--like that of a clipper three points off the
wind.

As I watched her, almost reclining in her partner's powerful grasp, her
lips moving incessantly, though audibly only to him, as her head leaned
against his shoulder, I thought of the old Rhineland tradition of the
Wilis; then the daughter of Herodias came into my mind; and then that
scarcely less murderous _danseuse_, at whose many-twinkling feet they
say the second Napoleon cast his frail life down.

If, in his assault on St. Anthony, the Evil One mingled no Terpsichorean
temptation, be sure it was because the ancient man had no ear for music,
I do not think that weapon was forgotten when Don Roderick, who had once
been a courtly king, did battle through a long winter's night with the
phantasm of fair, sinful La Cava.

The waltz was over, and I saw Guy and Flora disappear through the
curtained door of the conservatory. If there was one thing Mrs. Wallace
was prouder of than another, it was the arrangement of this sanctum.
Very justly so; for it had witnessed the commencement and happy
termination of more flirtations than half the ball-rooms in London put
together. When you got into one of those nooks, contrived in artful
recesses, shaded by magnolias, camellias, and the broad, thick-leaved
tropical plants, lighted dimly by lamps of many-colored glass, you felt
the recitation of some chapter in "the old tale so often told" a
necessity of the position, not a matter of choice. Aga