"Your mamma would not flatter me, Mademoiselle; but come now to Madame; she is waiting to behold you, and I have yet her toilet to make "; and, with a pitying shrug, Victorine followed Debby to her aunt's room. "Charming! really elegant!" cried that lady, emerging from her towel with a rubicund visage. "Drop that braid half an inch lower, and pull the worked end of her handkerchief out of the right-hand pocket, Vic. There! Now, Dora, don't run about and get rumpled, but sit quietly down and practice repose till I am ready." Debby obeyed, and sat mute, with the air of a child in its Sunday-best on a week-day, pleased with the novelty, but somewhat oppressed with the responsibility of such unaccustomed splendor, and utterly unable to connect any ideas of repose with tight shoes and skirts in a rampant state of starch. "Well, you see, I bet on Lady Gay against Cockadoodle, and if you'll believe me--Hullo! there's Mrs. Carroll, and deuse take me if she hasn't got a girl with her! Look, Seguin!"--and Joe Leavenworth, a "man of the world," aged twenty, paused in his account of an exciting race to make the announcement. Mr. Seguin, his friend and Mentor, as much his, senior in worldly wickedness as in years, tore himself from his breakfast long enough to survey the new-comers, and then returned to it, saying, briefly,-- "The old lady is worth cultivating,--gives good suppers, and thanks you for eating them. The girl is well got up, but has no style, and blushes like a milkmaid. Better fight shy of her, Joe." "Do you think so? Well, now I rather fancy that kind of thing. She's new, you see, and I get on with that sort of girl the best, for the old ones are so deused knowing that a fellow has no chance of a--By the Lord Harry, she's eating bread and milk!" Young Leavenworth whisked his glass into his eye, and Mr. Seguin put down his roll to behold the phenomenon. Poor Debby! her first step had been a wrong one.