ous movements completed the charm of a very interesting
picture.

Some wrapped in shawls to shroud them from the night air, some, less
cautiously emerging from the rooms within, leaned over the marble
balustrade and showed their jewelled arms in the dim hazy light, while
around and about them gay uniforms and costumes abounded. As Billy gave
himself up to the excitement of the music, young Massy, more interested
by the aspect of the scene, gazed unceasingly at the balcony. There was
just that shadowy indistinctness in the whole that invested it with a
kind of romantic interest, and he could weave stories and incidents from
those whose figures passed and repassed before him. He fancied that in
their gestures he could trace many meanings, and as the bent-down heads
approached, and their hands touched, he fashioned many a tale in his own
mind of moving fortunes.

"And see, she comes again to that same dark angle of the terrace,"
muttered he to himself, as, shrouded in a large mantle and with a half
mask on her features, a tall and graceful figure passed into the place
he spoke of. "She looks like one among, but not of, them. How much of
heart-weariness is there in that attitude; how full is it of sad and
tender melancholy! Would that I could see her face! My life on't that
it is beautiful! There, she is tearing up her bouquet; leaf by leaf the
rose-leaves are falling, as though one by one hopes are decaying in
her heart." He pushed his way through the dense throng till he gained a
corner of the court where a few leaves and flower-stems yet strewed the
ground; carefully gathering up these, he crushed them in his hand, and
seemed to feel as though a nearer tie bound him to the fair unknown. How
little ministers to the hope; how infinitely less again will feed the
imagination of a young heart!

Between them now there was, to his appreciation, some mysterious link.
"Yes," he said to himself, "true, I stand unknown, unnoticed; yet it is
to _me_ of all the thousands here she could reveal what is passing in
that heart! I know it, I feel it! She has a sorrow whose burden I might
help to bear. There is cruelty, or treachery, or falsehood arrayed
against her; and through all the splendor of the scene--all the wild
gayety of the orgie--some spectral image never leaves her side! I would
stake existence on it that I have read her aright!"

Of all the intoxications that can entrance the human faculties, there is
none so maddening as