“She is certainly very fortunate with her daughters.” “So she thinks, at least this time. But I am not clear that the three former connections with Law, Physic and Divinity were exactly to her mind.” “Certainly no three men occupy more respectable positions for their age in the community than her three sons-in-law, and as she had no fortune to give with her daughters, she should be thankful.” “I imagine few will be inclined to differ from you; but that very want of fortune causes her to be peculiarly alive to its advantages, and hence her delight at her daughter’s engagement to young Dawson.” “Is he so very rich?” “Not having any marriageable daughters of my own to dispose of, I never asked him for a schedule of his effects. But I supposed you to have been well posted on that point.” “Me! Bless you, my dear--I never trouble myself about such matters. Why should you think so?” “Oh, I know not. A mere random remark of mine. I thought I had some faint recollection of his flirtation with Laura last winter, and knowing your prudence, supposed you had made the necessary inquiries.” “You are much mistaken. There never was any thing between them. He is music-mad, and used frequently to come to listen to Laura’s harp. I suppose he thought it but right therefore to show her some attention in public, and hence the world interpreted it into something else. But, I assure you, there was never any thing in it.” “I never supposed there was. I always thought Laura was merely amusing herself. But how remarkably well she is looking to-night. Who is that distinguished looking man who is paying her such marked attention?” “That is a Mr. Ernest, who has recently returned from abroad, and has come home a perfect virtuoso, and you know that Laura’s taste lies in the same way.” “Yes, she certainly admires a mustache, for I notice that of late she encourages no one without that fashionable appendage.” Whilst Miss Laura Bridgeman was listening complacently to the remarks of the mustached beau by her side, and her mother and Mrs. Grayson, a fashionable widow of no particular age, and childless, were discussing things as above, in another part of the room, where lights and music added to the witchery which bright eyes and lovely forms make, young Dawson was hanging over his newly betrothed. In the meantime her mother was receiving the congratulations of troops of friends, for Henry Dawson was, in the phrase matrimonial, “the catch of the season.” He had long been an orphan--his fortune was large, his intellect fair and well cultivated, his person and address good, and his whole appearance decidedly gentlemanly and prepossessing. That he should have “fallen in love,” as the phrase goes, with his lively fiancée, none wondered, and save a few anxious mothers, who, like Mrs. Bridgeman, had marriageable daughters, all heartily congratulated him.