As they approached the termination of their journey, their talk naturally turned more and more on the Springs. The Vicomte was in possession of the latest advices thence; the arrivals and expected arrivals, and the price-current of stock: that is, of marriageable young gentlemen, and all other matters of gossip; how the whole family of the Robinsons was there in full force, with an unlimited amount of Parisian millinery; how Gerard Ludlow was driving four-in-hand, and Lowenberg had given his wife no end of jewelry; how Mrs. Harrison, who ought not to have been (not being of our set), nevertheless _was_ the great lioness of the season; how Miss Thompson, the belle expectant, had renounced the Springs altogether, and shut herself up at home somewhere among the mountains--all for unrequited love of Hamilton White, as was charitably reported; last, but not least, how Tom Edwards had invented six new figures for the German cotillon. Ashburner did not at first altogether understand the introduction of this personage into such good company, supposing from his familiar abbreviation and Terpsichorean attributes that he must be the fashionable dancing-master of Oldport, or perhaps of New-York; but he was speedily given to understand that, on the contrary, Mr. Edwards was a gay bachelor of good family and large fortune, who, in addition to gambling, intriguing, and other pleasant little propensities, had an insatiable passion for the dance, and was accustomed to rotate morning, noon, and night, whenever he was not gambling, &c. as aforesaid. "And," continued Benson, "I'll lay you any bet you please, that the first thing we see on arriving at our hotel, will be Tom Edwards dancing the polka; unless, indeed, he happen to be dancing the Redowa." "Very likely," said Mrs. Benson, "seeing we shall arrive there at ten o'clock, and this is a ball-night."