"Grace can speak for herself," said that young person, tartly. "You may tell them, if they ask anything about me," she continued, turning to the captain, "that they needn't look for my _début_ till Josephine is disposed of, and I am, _par excellence_, Miss Churchill." "Then," said the captain, gallantly, "you will not have a long time to wait, if what they say is true. I hear it hinted, Miss Josephine, that since Mr. Rutledge came from abroad this last time, he is quite changed, softened, you know, and made rather a society man; and they _do_ say that his friends in Gramercy Square have something to do with it." "I can't imagine how," said Josephine, all smiles and blushes. "If Joseph knew when she was well off," interposed Grace, who loved to damp her sister's triumphs, "she wouldn't blush; she doesn't look well; she grows mahogany color, doesn't she Phil. Why, you're blushing too! What's the matter with everybody?" "Everybody is blushing at your rudeness," said Mrs. Churchill, gravely. "I am sorry to be obliged to reprove you at the table; but I assure you, if you are not more careful"---- "Oh, mamma! you've always said it wasn't polite to deliver a reprimand in company; don't break through your rule. I won't say another word about blushing. Let's talk of something pleasanter. So," she continued, turning to the captain, "they really say Mr. Rutledge wants to marry Josephine?" "Grace, leave the table," said her mother, concisely, but in a tone there was no mistaking, and which fell on the ears of the startled company with uncomfortable clearness, and on none more unexpectedly than on those of the young delinquent herself, who had never been so unequivocally disgraced before. She had trusted greatly to her mother's partiality and her own acuteness in warding off reproof, and this took her quite by surprise. She had not calculated the dangerous nature of the ground she was treading on, nor the decision of her mother's character when once roused, and so this edict came upon her like a clap of thunder. She was constitutionally incapable of blushing, or of looking confused, but she approached on this occasion more nearly to a state of embarrassment than I had ever supposed she could; but recovering herself in a moment, she deliberately folded her napkin and put it on the table, pushed back her chair, made a low courtesy, and saying, "Bon soir, mesdames; bon soir, messieurs," retreated in good order.