and gentle meaning to her smile when he drew near. At any rate, it would be churlish not to accept the preference these conveyed, and to like her and his position as her chosen knight better every day; it was inevitable that he should marvel--not without melancholy-at the flight of time that brought so soon the day of parting. The Masons, with himself, were engaged to attend a large party on the last evening of January. Without analyzing the impulse that constrained him to do so, he had refrained from reminding Rosa that his stay in Washington was so nearly over, and, with masculine consistency, he was half disposed to be affronted that she had forgotten what he had said to her of its extent. He had never seen her more lively--in more radiant spirits and looks--than she was upon the night of the 30th. He had dropped into her aunt's parlor about ten o'clock, and detected Rosa in the act of dragging her new ball-dress from the box in which the mantua maker had sent it home. “Conceive, if you can--but you can't, being a man--what I have undergone for an hour and more!” she cried, at seeing him. “My treasure--the darlingest love of a dress I have ever ordered--was brought in exactly two seconds before a brace of honorables--lumbering machines that they are! knocked at the door. So, lest they should brand me as a frivolous doll (as if anybody with a soul, and an infinitesimal degree of love for the beautiful, COULD help admiring the divine thing!), I pushed the poor box under the sofa, and there it has lain in ignominious neglect, like a pearl of purest ray serene smothered in an oyster, all the time they were here. I was purposely cross and stupid, too, in the hope of getting rid of them the sooner. If you despise what most of your undiscriminating sex call fancy articles, consider a woman's fondness for a ravishing robe despicable and irrational, Mr. Chilton, you need not look this way. You could hardly have a severer--certainly not a more appropriate--punishment.” “You depreciate my aesthetic proclivities,” he rejoined, catching her tone. “You would not trust my bungling fingers to help excavate the gem, I know; but I may surely use my eyes--admire, as we bid children do--with my hands behind my back.” Notwithstanding his boast of knowingness in the mysteries of feminine apparel, he could not have told of what material the divine robe was made--except that it was some shiny white stuff, with wide embroidery upon the flounces. But Rosa, her aunt, and cousin had gone into ecstacies over it, and instigated by kind-hearted Mrs. Mason, the enraptured owner had rushed off to Mrs. Mason's chamber to try it on, returning presently in full array, elate at the “perfect fit,” and insisting upon a unanimous declaration that she “had never before worn anything one-thousandth part as becoming.”