k, was joining in the busy dance, plainly showed that, in some
respects at least, Mrs. Temple had to acknowledge that the bright
present had even eclipsed her favourite past.

Yes, to the gay sound of music, amid the bright butterflies of fashion,
who flew heartlessly through the mazes of the graceful dance, Virginia
Temple moved--with them, but not of them. She had not forgotten
Hansford, but she had forgotten self, and, determined to please her
mother, she had sought to banish from her heart, for the time, the
sorrow which was still there. She had come to the ball with Bernard, and
he, seeing well the effort she had made, bent all the powers of his
gifted mind to interest her thoughts, and beguile them from the
absorbing subject of her grief. She attributed his efforts to a generous
nature, and thanked him in her heart for thus devoting himself to her
pleasure. She had attempted to return his kindness by an assumed
cheerfulness, which gradually became real and natural, for shadows rest
not long upon a young heart. They fly from the blooming garden of youth,
and settle themselves amid the gloom and ruins of hoary age. And never
had Alfred Bernard thought the fair girl more lovely, as, with just
enough of pensive melancholy to soften and not to sadden her heart, she
moved among the gay and thoughtless throng around her.

The room next to the ball-room was appropriated to such of the guests as
chose to engage in cards and dice; for in this, as in many other
respects, the colony attempted to imitate the vices of the mother
country. It is true the habit of gaming was not so recklessly
extravagant as that which disgraced the corrupt court of Charles the
Second, and yet the old planters were sufficiently bold in their risks,
and many hundreds of pounds of tobacco often hung upon the turn of the
dice-box or the pip[26] of a card. Seated around the old fashioned
card-table of walnut, were sundry groups of those honest burgesses, who
were ready enough in the discharge of their political functions in the
state-house, but after the adjournment were fully prepared for all kinds
of fun. Some were playing at gleek, and, to the uninitiated,
incomprehensible was the jargon in which the players indulged. "Who'll
buy the stock?" cries the dealer. "I bid five"--"and I ten"--"and I
fifty." Vie, revie, surrevie, capote, double capote, were the terms that
rang through the room, as the excited gamesters, with anxious faces,
sorted and exami