Upon one occasion, however--that of the vacation preceding the last year of Mathilde's residence at school--Mr. Legare determined to vary their usual route by going to the Northern watering places of Saratoga and Ballstown. And, as usual, I, with the consent of my guardians, accompanied the party as their invited guest. We arrived at Saratoga at the very height of the season. In all, I suppose that there might have been several thousand visitors at the springs. The United States Hotel, at which we stopped, was uncomfortably crowded. And, though Mr. Legare grumbled in a very old-gentlemanly way, and Mrs. Legare wished herself at home again, Mathilde and I enjoyed the crowd for the crowd's sake, and experienced the truth of the popular adage of "the more the merrier." At a place like that, even in the ballroom, "distinction" was almost as impossible as it is said to be in London, where, now that the "duke" is dead, no one is any one. Scarcely anybody was anybody at Saratoga that season. Many a village beauty, the toast of her own little circle, and many a city belle, the queen of her own coterie, who went thither, reasonably expecting to make a "sensation," found herself and her claims to notice lost in a brilliant multitude all more or less expectant or disappointed. I thought Mathilde, with her tall and beautifully rounded form, stately head, pure olive complexion, shaded by jet-black ringlets, and lighted up by laughing black eyes, bridged over with arch and flexible black eyebrows--would attract some attention. Not a bit of it! Heiress and beauty, as she was, Mathilde Legare was merely one in the crowd. There were hundreds with equal or greater claims to distinction. And so our beautiful Mathilde was not enthroned. Of course she soon attracted around her a circle of old and new acquaintances and had from them a due share of attention. Among the first of these new acquaintances was a young gentleman of the name of Howard. His introduction to our party, without being romantic, was certainly marked by singularity. It occurred the third day after our arrival, at one of the weekly balls at the United States. It happened to be a fine, cool evening, and the assembly upon the occasion was unusually large. The saloon was quite crowded, leaving but little room for the motions of the dancers. Mathilde was looking very beautiful that night. She wore a dress with a three-fold skirt of very fine, transparent thale over rose-colored silk, and which with every motion floated around her graceful form with a mistlike softness and lightness; a bertha and falls of the finest lace veiled her rounded arms and neck. She wore no jewels, but a wreath of rich white heliotrope crowned her jetty ringlets, and a bouquet of the same odoriferous flowers employed her slender fingers.