one would have
suspected, absorbed as she appeared to be with the attentions of
Montague, who was playing the agreeable to the best of his knowledge,
that her curiosity was at work, wondering what the subject of the
truants, tete-a-tete might be. "They are discussing the rare exotics,
sent to us from the South," she thought within herself, and indeed,
what other could interest the cold-hearted Delwood? who, it was thought
had never dreamed of love this side of the Atlantic; and as for Natalie,
many a private lecture had she received from Winnie, in regard to her
indifference toward the gentleman! though those discourses had been
invariably of the same termination, "for all that, Natalie, your heart
is made for love."

From the first moment that Clarence Delwood had set his eye upon the
Sea-flower, an interest which he had never known before had been
awakened within him. It may be said that it was a weakness, that he had
always looked upon women as mere butterflies, but owing to early
circumstances, he having been bereft of his mother in infancy, never
having known the blessings of a sister's society, he was not to be
condemned for the impressions which a gaudily attired attendant had left
upon his mind as he grew up into boyhood. But as he listened to the
Sea-flower, as she told him of her home in the sea, of the music of the
glorious billows, companions of her childhood, filling the very soul
with nature's beauty and sublimity, he looked upon her, as if fearful
she might prove an "Undine," and he would not have been taken by
surprise had her spiritual face faded calmly from beneath his gaze, to
join her sister nymphs of ocean.

"And you will soon return to your island home?" he asked, as a thought
of the warmth with which she had expressed herself to a stranger, bade
her pause in her enthusiasm with downcast eye.

"Yes, I shall soon return," she answered joyously, "and yet I shall
remember Boston with feelings of pleasure, for I have spent happy
hours here."

As she said this, their eyes involuntarily met; a silent spectator would
have noted the contrast of the moistened blue, to the deep black of
sterner make, but as it was, that contrast was not discovered, each felt
that the other was reading the thought, which had but then sprung up
within the soul. Natalie withdrew her gaze, while Delwood, stooping to
pluck a moss rose-bud from an urn at her feet, placed it within his
diamond fastener, and the two retraced th