When I found myself the next morning at home, I could not help ruminating over the strange adventures of the preceding day, and felt a kind of self-reproach at the frigid manner in which I had hitherto treated all the Blake advances, contrasting so ill for me with the unaffected warmth and kind good-nature of their reception. Never alluding, even by accident, to my late estrangement; never, by a chance speech, indicating that they felt any soreness for the past,--they talked away about the gossip of the country: its feuds, its dinners, its assizes, its balls, its garrisons,--all the varied subjects of country life were gayly and laughingly discussed; and when, as I entered my own silent and deserted home, and contrasted its look of melancholy and gloom with the gay and merry scene I so lately parted from, when my echoing steps reverberated along the flagged hall,--I thought of the happy family picture I left behind me, and could not help avowing to myself that the goods of fortune I possessed were but ill dispensed, when, in the midst of every means and appliance for comfort and happiness, I lived a solitary man, companionless and alone. I arose from breakfast a hundred times,--now walking impatiently towards the window, now strolling into the drawing-room. Around, on every side, lay scattered the prints and drawings, as Baby had thrown them carelessly upon the floor; her handkerchief was also there. I took it up; I know not why,--some lurking leaven of old romance perhaps suggested it,--but I hoped it might prove of delicate texture, and bespeaking that lady-like coquetry which so pleasantly associates with the sex in our minds. Alas, no! Nothing could be more palpably the opposite: torn, and with a knot--some hint to memory--upon one corner, it was no aid to my careering fancy. And yet--and yet, what a handsome girl she is; how finely, how delicately formed that Greek outline of forehead and brow; how transparently soft that downy pink upon her cheek! With what varied expression those eyes can beam!--ay, that they can: but, confound it, there’s this fault, their very archness, their sly malice, will be interpreted by the ill-judging world to any but the real motive. “How like a flirt!” will one say. “How impertinent! How ill-bred!” The conventional stare of cold, patched, and painted beauty, upon whose unblushing cheek no stray tinge of modesty has wandered, will be tolerated, even admired; while the artless beamings of the soul upon the face of rural loveliness will be condemned without appeal. Such a girl may a man marry who destines his days to the wild west; but woe unto him!--woe unto him, should he migrate among the more civilized and less charitable _coteries_ of our neighbors! “Ah, here are the papers, and I was forgetting. Let me see--‘Bayonne’--ay, ‘march of the troops--Sixth Corps.’ What can that be without? I say, Mike, who is cantering along the avenue?”