Over the glittering heap that dazzled Ada’s eyes, as she entered the room, was flung the scarf of delicate Brussels, no longer the veil but the ornament of brides; and Kate herself was standing before a Cheval-glass, adjusting the folds of a bright Cashmere, which fell, soft as silk, around her slight figure. “Beautiful!” exclaimed Ada, herself an exquisite judge of dress: “and how becoming.” “Which is more to the purpose,” replied Catharine, laughing; and she threw her shawl upon the bed, thereby disturbing the flounces of six silk dresses, which flew up like so many peacocks’ tails. The next moment she was snapping asunder the cords that bound up Ada’s package, and her busy fingers had soon torn off the papers that enveloped it. “Beautiful! beautiful!” cried she, delighted, “the very, the _only_ thing I wanted. Oh,” cried she, opening it, “this is really prettier than Mrs. Darrington’s gift to you in days of yore, Ada. Do you remember your exultation, and my envy on that memorable evening? And the ring—poor James’ emerald! Suppose he were to return with _another_ ring, do you think your heart could be made to beat to the tune of ‘Auld lang syne’?” “I should not know him if I met him,” replied Ada; but she was so busy fastening her glove that Catharine could not see whether her saucy question had made an impression. She knew that Ada disliked the least allusion to her early love, a symptom which, as Catharine was “herself and not Œdipus,” puzzled her exceedingly. “What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba?” said she, carelessly, and after replacing all the boxes and flacons she had taken out of her dressing-case, she continued: “Well! I suppose I must give you up. George wouldn’t do, would he?” asked she, with a saucy smile, and then shaking her head: “No—No—I see you resent my old offer of him as successor to the unfortunate James, whose memory now lies ‘five fathom deep under the blade waters of Lethe.’” Ada leaned her head upon her hand, and her fancy wandered back to the days of her childish love, and the spell of memory was so potent that her heart beat as if the black waters of Lethe had not engulfed _all_ remembrance. Catharine looked at her in some surprise, and then snatching from the table a little Cupid of _bronze artistique_, whose quiver was filled with harmless lamplighters, she placed it before Ada, saying: “‘Qui que tu sois, voici ton maître Il est, le fut, ou le doit être.’ After all, Ada, there is nothing but the difference of a tense between you and me. I _am_, and you _have been_ in love, and if ‘_Il a bu boira_,’ I think I may venture to hope that ‘_Elle a aimée, aimera_.’”