united ingenuity half an hour to arrange "to please him," could be undone in a minute. "Cut the cursed things, can't you?" implored he. No one had a knife. "I do believe, Branling, you are tying that knot tighter: I had much rather not have your assistance." Branling protested his innocence. At last we did release him, and he entered the room with a look most appropriately crest-fallen, shako in hand, solacing himself by displaying its glories as well as could be effected by judicious changes of its position. I soon found Clara, looking more radiantly beautiful than ever I had seen her, in a sweet dress of Stuart tartan. I had to make my apologies, which were most sincerely penitent ones, for not being in time to claim my privilege of dancing the first quadrille with her. She smiled at my evident earnestness, and good-humouredly added, that the next would be a much more pleasant dance, as the room was now beginning to fill. It was a pleasant dance, as she said; and the waltz that followed still more delightful; and then Clara, with a blush and a laugh, declined my pressing entreaties until after supper at all events. I refused her good-natured offer of an introduction to "that pretty girl in blue," or any other among the stars of the night; and sat down, or leant against the wall, almost unconsciously watching her light step, and sternly resisting all attempts on the part of my acquaintances to persuade me to dance again. Of course, all the dancing characters among our party were Clara's partners in succession; and both Gordon and Dawson, who came to ask what had put me into the sulks, were loud in their encomiums on her beauty and fascination; even Branling, no very devoted admirer of the sex (he saw too much of them, he said, having four presentable sisters), allowed that she was "the right sort of girl;" but it was not until I saw her stand up with Willingham, and marked his evident admiration of her, and heard the remarks freely made around me, that they were the handsomest couple in the room, that I felt a twinge of what I would hardly allow to myself was jealousy: when, however, after the dance, they passed me in laughing conversation, evidently in high good-humour with each other, and too much occupied to notice any one else, I began to wonder I had never before found out what a conceited puppy Willingham was, and set down poor Clara as an arrant flirt. But I was in a variable mood, it seemed, and a feather--or, what some may say is even lighter, a woman's word--was enough to turn me. So when I found myself, by some irresistible attraction, drawn next to her again at supper, and heard her sweet voice, and saw what I interpreted into a smile of welcome, as she made room for me beside her, I forgave her all past offences, and was perfectly happy for the next hour; nay, even condescended to challenge Willingham to a glass of _soi-disant_ champagne. The Tiger, who was, according to annual custom, displaying