I saw no more of my mistress for a week. I have reason to think that she had determined never to use me; but female resolutions, in matters of dress, are not of the most inflexible nature. There was a certain Mrs. Leamington, in New York, who gave a great ball about this time, and being in the same set as the Monsons, the family was invited as a matter of course. It would have surpassed the powers of self-denial to keep me in the back-ground on such an occasion; and Julia, having first cleared the way by owning her folly to a very indulgent father, and a very tormenting brother, determined nobly to bring me out, let the effect on Betts Shoreham be what it might. As the father had no female friends to trouble him, he was asked to join the Monsons--the intimacy fully warranting the step. Julia never looked more lovely than she did that night. She anticipated much pleasure, and her smiles were in proportion to her anticipations. When all was ready, she took me from the drawer, let a single drop of lavender fall in my bosom, and tripped down stairs toward the drawing-room; Betts Shoreham and Mademoiselle Hennequin were together, and, for a novelty, alone. I say, for a novelty, because the governess had few opportunities to see any one without the presence of a third person, and because her habits, as an unmarried and well educated French woman, indisposed her to tete-a-tetes with the other sex. My mistress was lynx-eyed in all that related to Betts Shoreham and the governess. A single glance told her that their recent conversation had been more than usually interesting; nor could I help seeing it myself--the face of the governess being red, or in that condition which, were she aught but a governess, would be called suffused with blushes. Julia felt uncomfortable--she felt herself to be de trop; and making an incoherent excuse, she had scarcely taken a seat on a sofa, before she arose, left the room, and ran up stairs again. In doing so, however, the poor girl left me inadvertently on the sofa she had so suddenly quitted herself. {de trop = one too many} Betts Shoreham manifested no concern at this movement, though Mademoiselle Hennequin precipitately changed her seat, which had been quite near--approximately near, as one might say--to the chair occupied by the gentleman. This new evolution placed the governess close at my side. Now whatever might have been the subject of discourse between these two young persons--for Mademoiselle Hennequin was quite as youthful as my mistress, let her beauty be as it might--it was not continued in my presence; on the contrary, the young lady turned her eyes on me, instead of looking at her companion, and then she raised me in her hand, and commenced a critical examination of my person.