“Isn't it becoming?” asked the girl, making her dark eyes at once merry and demure. Mr. Lyon was looking intently at the opposite box, and a slight shade came over his fine face. “Ah, I see!” “I beg your pardon, Miss Eschelle,” he said, after a second, “I hardly know which to admire most, the beauty, or the wit, or the innocence of the American women.” “There is nothing so confusing, though, as the country innocence,” the girl said, with the most natural air; “it never knows where to stop.” “You are too absurd, Carmen,” her mother interposed; “as if the town girl did!” “Well, mamma, there is authority for saying that there is a time for everything, only one must be in the fashion, you know.” Mr. Lyon looked a little dubious at this turn of the talk; Mr. Henderson was as evidently amused at the girl's acting. I said I was glad to see that goodness was in fashion. “Oh, it often is. You know we were promised a knowledge of good as well as evil. It depends upon the point of view. I fancy, now, that Mr. Henderson tolerates the good--that is the reason we get on so well together; and Mr. Lyon tolerates the evil--that's the reason he likes New York. I have almost promised him that I will have a mission school.” The girl looked quite capable of it, or of any other form of devotion. Notwithstanding her persistent banter, she had a most inviting innocence of manner, almost an ingenuousness, that well became her exquisite beauty. And but for a tentative daring in her talk, as if the gentle creature were experimenting as to how far one could safely go, her innocence might have seemed that of ignorance. It came out in the talk that Mr. Lyon had been in Washington for a week, and would return there later on. “We had a claim on him,” said Mrs. Eschelle, “for his kindness to us in London, and we are trying to convince him that New York is the real capital.” “Unfortunately,” added Miss Eschelle, looking up in Mr. Lyon's face, “he visited Brandon first, and you seem to have bewitched him with your simple country ways. I can get him to talk of nothing else.” “You mean to say,” Mr. Lyon replied, with the air of retorting, “that you have asked me about nothing else.” “Oh, you know we felt a little responsible for you; and there is no place so dangerous as the country. Now here you are protected--we put all the wickedness on the stage, and learn to recognize and shun it.” “It may be wicked,” said her mother, “but it is dull. Don't you find it so, Mr. Henderson? I am passionately fond of Wagner, but it is too noisy for anything tonight.” “I notice, dear,” the dutiful daughter replied for all of us, “that you have to raise your voice. But there is the ballet. Let us all listen now.”