among the colored lamps on the long veranda, and startled
a group of ladies and gentlemen who had stepped from the drawing-room
window to gaze upon it. It was so searching and sincere in its way,
that, as the carriage of the fairest Miss Gillyflower rolled away, that
peerless young woman, catching sight of her face in the oval mirror,
instantly pulled down the blinds, and, nestling the whitest shoulders in
Greyport against the crimson cushions, went to sleep.

"How haggard everybody is! Rose, dear, you look almost intellectual,"
said Blanche Masterman.

"I hope not," said Rose, simply. "Sunrises are very trying. Look how
that pink regularly puts out Mrs. Brown-Robinson, hair and all!"

"The angels," said the Count de Nugat, with a polite gesture toward
the sky, "must have find these celestial combinations very bad for the
toilette."

"They're safe in white,--except when they sit for their pictures in
Venice," said Blanche. "How fresh Mr. Islington looks! It's really
uncomplimentary to us."

"I suppose the sun recognizes in me no rival," said the young man,
demurely. "But," he added, "I have lived much in the open air, and
require very little sleep."

"How delightful!" said Mrs. Brown-Robinson, in a low, enthusiastic
voice and a manner that held the glowing sentiment of sixteen and the
practical experiences of thirty-two in dangerous combination;--"how
perfectly delightful! What sunrises you must have seen, and in such
wild, romantic places! How I envy you! My nephew was a classmate of
yours, and has often repeated to me those charming stories you tell of
your adventures. Won't you tell some now? Do! How you must tire of us
and this artificial life here, so frightfully artificial, you know" (in
a confidential whisper); "and then to think of the days when you roamed
the great West with the Indians, and the bisons, and the grizzly bears!
Of course, you have seen grizzly bears and bisons?"

"Of course he has, dear," said Blanche, a little pettishly, throwing
a cloak over her shoulders, and seizing her chaperon by the arm; "his
earliest infancy was soothed by bisons, and he proudly points to the
grizzly bear as the playmate of his youth. Come with me, and I'll tell
you all about it. How good it is of you," she added, sotto voce, to
Islington, as he stood by the carriage,--"how perfectly good it is of
you to be like those animals you tell us of, and not know your full
power. Think, with your experiences and our credul