period they both suddenly exalted their voices, bellowed their love at each other in one final outburst of sympathetic insanity, and subsided into a refreshing silence. Then a young lady in a pink sash informed the company that her brain was on fire, her heart consuming, and her digestive organs generally in a state of spontaneous combustion, because her fatherland writhed in the grasp of tyrants--“tra la, tra lira la!”--which unpleasant state of affairs was much applauded by hairy exiles, with microscopic washing bills, which they never paid, and a monomania in regard to freedom, which they never obtained, but which had kept them in hot water (the only water they patronized) from their youth upwards. Lastly, a very mild young gentleman of England excited himself about some “Rivar! rivar! shining rivar!” into which pellucid stream he kept putting his foot “deeper and deeper still,” until every one was so sorry for him, that the whole party appeared on the verge of hysterics, and were forced to conceal their emotion behind fans, flounced pocket-handkerchiefs, and white-gloved hands. Then the votaries of Terpsichore stood at ease upon their light fantastic toes (except in the cases of tightly-shod martyrs), and polking was the order of the night--at which period Alice looked about and wondered what had become of Lord Alfred Courtland, who had said a great deal on the subject of the delight he expected in dancing with her, and had engaged her hand for the first polka. Now, whether any strictly moral reader, with that bad opinion of poor human nature which very strict morality usually induces, has decided that “every woman is at heart a rake,” and believed our little heroine about to prove herself a “dreadful creature,” and transfer her affections from her lawful husband to her unlawful admirer, we do not know; but if any reader has set his (or her) heart on such a consummation, we are sorry to be obliged to inform him that he is mistaken. Alice considered Lord Alfred a good-natured agreeable boy, whose conversation served to amuse her, and to whose society she had become accustomed; she would a thousand times rather have talked to Harry at any time, but Harry was not always attainable--indeed, the chances were generally against her seeing anything of him from breakfast till dinner-time, and then Lord Alfred became a very good and safe substitute.