Dinner at the Masons' was never a brief meal; the master of the house had known too much of short commons in his boyhood, and eighteen-penny lunches at second-rate eating-houses during his clerkship, not to place a full value upon the luxuries of the table; and on the present occasion nothing was wanting to make it an elaborate and elegant repast, honorable to guests and entertainers. It was five o'clock before we left the table, and fully six before we were in the saddle. The ride to Beech Grove occupied another hour; a mere call, of course, was impossible. We were quite as cordially, though rather less enthusiastically, welcomed by Mr. Emerson and his black-eyed daughter; the horses were again sent away, and we were told to consider ourselves prisoners for the evening. Not a very dreary and insupportable prison, certainly, we were condemned to. Beech Grove was a lovely spot; the house, about one-third the size of the one we had just left, was a gem in point of architectural beauty and tasteful decoration. Cultivation and refinement spoke at every turn--choice pictures, rare books, exquisite bronzes, were the natural and unobtrusive furniture of the rooms; one was not called upon to admire by anything more demonstrative than quiet enjoyment and ease. It was the atmosphere of the place that one was to revel in; and no obligation existed to analyze its component parts. The realization of the speedy termination of our pleasant intercourse, at least for the present, gave a very natural charm to the evening, and made it a very prolonged and happy one. At least, to those of us who had not forgotten how to be happy; for me, I could hardly remember when I had not been wretched, so agonizingly long and miserable had the past fortnight been, and so strongly had it marked itself on my memory. I looked with a kind of wonder at the light-heartedness of my companions. Was it possible I had ever found anything to laugh at in such things as called forth their merriment, or anything to stir my anger in their puerile slights and taunts? Grace was vexed by my indifference, and tried, with no contemptible ingenuity, to irritate me; and Josephine and Ella too, resented my determined appropriation of their beaux. I was too listless though, at last they found, to make it pay to tease me; so, by degrees, they dropped off and left me. Even Mr. Mason, it was evident, was beginning to think that he had overrated my spirit, and the captain, that my overtures of the morning did not mean quite so much, after all, as he had flattered himself. Miss Emerson, who was a nice, bright girl, not in the least afraid of herself or of any one else, and with whom one felt intimate after half an hour's acquaintance, ran up to me and asked me _sotto voce_, if it didn't bore me to death to have that man talk to me; she was sure I looked tired, and she meant to relieve me; so, with some clever excuse, in a few minutes she hurried me off to the library,