blue, too, as--as the ocean near the line, that sometimes, in a clear calm, gets to melt till you scarcely know it from the sky. 'Look, Edward!' whispered my sister, 'what a pretty creature! She can't be English, she looks so different from everybody in the room. And such pearls in her hair! such a beautifully large diamond in that brooch! Who can she be, I wonder?' I was so taken up, however, that I never recollected at all what Jane said till at night, in thinking the matter over; and then a whole breeze of whisperings seemingly came from every corner of the cloakroom, of 'Who is she?' 'Who can she be?' 'Who's her father?' and so on, which I remembered to have heard. I only noticed at the time that somebody said she was the daughter of some rich East India nabob or other, just come home. A post-captain who was present--one of Collingwood's flag-lieutenants--went up to the old _chaperon_, whom he seemed to know, and got into talk with her: I found afterwards she was an admiral's widow. In a little I saw him introduced to the young lady, and ask her to dance; I fancied she hung back for a moment, but the next she bowed, gave a slight smile to the captain's gallant sea-fashion of deep respect to the sex, and they were soon swimming away in the first set. Her dancing was more like walking with spread wings upon air than upon planks with one's arms out, as the captain did. I'd have given my eyes, not to speak of my commission and chances to come, to have gone through that figure with _her_. When the captain had handed her to her seat again, two or three of the dragoons sauntered up to Lady Somers's sofa: it was plain they were taken; and after conversing with the old lady, one of them, Lord Somebody, as I understood, got introduced, in his turn, to the young beauty. As may be supposed, I kept a look-out for his asking her to dance, seeing that, if she had done so with one of the embroidered crew, and their clattering gear, I'd have gone out that instant, found out the Waterloo fellow next day, and, if not shot myself, have drilled him with an anchor button for a bullet, and run off in the first craft I could get. The cool, easy, impertinent way this second man made his request, though--just as if he couldn't be refused, and didn't care about it--it was as different from the captain of the _Diomede's_ as red from blue! My heart went like the main-tack blocks thrashing when you luff too much; so you may guess what I felt to see the young lady, who was leaning back on the sofa, give her head a pettish sort of turn to the old one, without a word, as much as to say she didn't want to. 'My love!' I heard the old lady say, 'I fear you are tired! My Lord, your lordship must excuse Miss Hyde on this occasion, as she is in delicate health!' The dragoon was a polite nobleman, according to his cloth; so he kept on talking and smiling, till he could walk off without seeming as if he'd got his sabre betwixt his feet; but I fancied