"Oh, I only proposed it because we have so much to do. I should enjoy a longer drive. Indeed, now that you have suggested it, we will take at least one turn." "That's a darling," cried Elsie; and, without further ceremony, she ordered the coachman to take the Bloomingdale road, laughing out something about dying for old sheep instead of lambs. "But I want to stop at Maillard's," protested Mrs. Harrington, "and I then must see about--" "Oh, never mind, we shall have time enough," exclaimed Elsie. "Drive like the wind, James, the moment you get beyond these horrid policemen. I wouldn't have anybody pass us for the world." The coachman obeyed, and directly those two black horses were dashing along the road in splendid style, leaving care and prudence far behind them. Elsie was in her element, wild as a bird and gay as the sunset. She talked and laughed incessantly, saying all sorts of merry things in a childish fashion, that kept Mrs. Harrington in explosions of laughter, more natural than she often indulged in, while Elizabeth Fuller leaned back in her seat, listening, absently sometimes, to their graceful banter, glancing at the young girl with affectionate admiration of her youthful loveliness, but oftener losing herself in the pleasant train of thought which had absorbed her all the afternoon. Three persons more unlike in appearance than these ladies, it would have been difficult to find; but a casual observer would probably have been most attracted by the buoyant loveliness of Elsie Mellen. She was eighteen,--but seemed younger with her fair curls, her brilliant bloom, and the childish rapidity with which smiles chased each other across her face. She looked the very personification of happiness, with a bewitching _naiveté_ in every word or movement, that made her very childishness more captivating than the wisdom of older and more sensible women. Mrs. Harrington was a stylish, dashing widow, with a suspicion of rouge on her somewhat faded cheeks, and an affectation of fashionable listlessness which a look of real amiability somewhat belied. She was one of those frivolous, good-natured women, who go through life without ever being moved by an actual pleasure or pain, so engrossed by their petty round of amusement, that if they originally possessed faculties capable of development into something better, no warning of it ever touches their souls. Really the most noble and imposing person present was Miss Fuller. The contrast between her grave, sweet beauty and the frivolous loveliness of the other two, was striking indeed. Sometimes her large gray eyes seemed dull and cold under their long black lashes, and the dark hair was banded smoothly away from a forehead that betokened intellectual strength; the mouth was a little compressed, giving token of the reticence and self-repose of her nature, and a classical correctness of profile added to the quiet gravity of her countenance.