If it were not for this mysterious selfness-and-sameness which makes this wild, wandering, uncanonical sailor, James Marvyn, so intimate and internal,--if his thread were not knit up with the thread of her life,--were it not for the old habit of feeling for him, thinking for him, praying for him, hoping for him, fearing for him, which--woe is us!--is the unfortunate habit of womankind,--if it were not for that fatal something which neither judgment, nor wishes, nor reason, nor common sense shows any great skill in unravelling,--we are quite sure that Mary would be in love with the Doctor within the next six months; as it is, we leave you all to infer from your own heart and consciousness what his chances are. A new sort of scene is about to open on our heroine, and we shall show her to you, for an evening at least, in new associations, and with a different background from that homely and rural one in which she has fluttered as a white dove amid leafy and congenial surroundings. As we have before intimated, Newport presented a _résumé_ of many different phases of society, all brought upon a social level by the then universally admitted principle of equality. There were scattered about in the settlement lordly mansions, whose owners rolled in emblazoned carriages, and whose wide halls were the scenes of a showy and almost princely hospitality. By her husband's side, Mrs. Katy Scudder was allied to one of these families of wealthy planters, and often recognized the connection with a quiet undertone of satisfaction, as a dignified and self-respecting woman should. She liked, once in a while, quietly to let people know, that, although they lived in the plain little cottage and made no pretensions, yet they had good blood in their veins,--that Mr. Scudder's mother was a Wilcox, and that the Wilcoxes were, she supposed, as high as anybody,--generally ending the remark with the observation, that "all these things, to be sure, were matters of small consequence, since at last it would be of far more importance to have been a true Christian than to have been connected with the highest families of the land." Nevertheless, Mrs. Scudder was not a little pleased to have in her possession a card of invitation to a splendid wedding-party that was going to be given, on Friday, at the Wilcox Manor. She thought it a very becoming mark of respect to the deceased Mr. Scudder that his widow and daughter should be brought to mind,--so becoming and praiseworthy, in fact, that, "though an old woman," as she said, with a complacent straightening of her tall, lithe figure, she really thought she must make an effort to go.