omen; but by no means remarkably distinguished either for beauty
or wit. Benson explained to him that his cousin "had married for tin."

"But Ludlow always talked of his father as a rich man, and his family as
a small one. I should have supposed money about the last thing he would
have married for."

"Yes, he had prospects of the best; but he wanted ready money and a
settled income. He was on a small allowance; he knew the only way to get
a handsome one was to marry, and that the more money his wife brought,
the more his father would come down with. So as Miss Hammersley had
eight thousand a year, old Ludlow trebled it; and Gerard may build as
many phaetons as he likes. I don't mean to say that the match is an
uncongenial one--they have many tastes alike; but I do mean to say that
love had nothing to do with it."

"Well, I used to think that in your unsophisticated Republican country,
people married out of pure love; but now it looks as if the
fashionables, at least, marry for money about as often as we do."

"They don't marry for any thing else," replied Benson, using one of the
slang phrases of the day.[26]

While the two friends were gossiping, Sumner and Le Roi had carried off
the ladies; and an assemblage of juvenile beaux and young girls, and
some few of the younger married women, had extemporized a dance in the
largest of the public parlors, which they kept up till two o'clock, and
then vanished--to dress, as it appeared, for the three o'clock dinner.
Benson's party had obtained their apartments at last,--a parlor and two
bedrooms for the ladies on the first floor, and chambers for the three
men in the second story, of a recently built wing, popularly known as
"the Colony," where most of the gay bachelors, and not a few of the
young married men, slept. At dinner the ladies presented themselves as
much dressed as they could be without being _decolletees_; and the men
had doffed their grass-cloth or linen garments, and put on dress-coats,
or, at least, black coats. Ashburner was a good-looking young man
enough, and had sufficient vanity to take notice, in the course of the
morning, that he was an object of attention; at dinner many looks were
directed towards him, but with an expression of disappointment which he
did not exactly understand at the time, but afterwards learned the
reason of from his friend. Though making no pretensions to the title of
exquisite, he happened to have a very neat shooting-jacket,
u