"He set the room in a perfect roar of laughter, and then a delightful confusion prevailed. Lamar did not repeat exactly the same things which he had treated us with at the dinner-table, but he preserved the stages, dwelling a much shorter time on the heroic, and much longer on the two latter. "He introduced a heroine into his shades and bowers, and painted Isabel as he saw her at the Springs; so, at least, I suspect from a certain mantling of the colour into her cheeks. "'Then,' said he, speaking of the third stage, 'his hands fall by his side, his eyes are closed, he sighs profoundly, but comfortably and _somnolently_; perhaps he is married; his wife steals gently up and kisses him. 'My dear, the milliner's bill has come.'--'O _dam_ the miller!' In a short time she returns--'My dear, my pin money is out: come now, you are not asleep, I know: and that is not all--the carriage wants painting; the house wants repairs; the children want toys; servants want wages.' He rolls his head over on one shoulder, opens his eyes, and fixes them in a deliberate stare, as I do now, upon Miss Isabel.' This last idea became either too sentimental or too ludicrous for Lamar; and he jumped up in an unsuppressed fit of laughter. You know Lamar, therefore I need not tell you that this is a very imperfect sketch of the manner in which he acted the ludicrous and careless, but _hen-pecked_, husband. I do not wonder that he laughed, when he looked at Isabel, for her face was indescribably arch and sanctimonious. "Hilarity and glee seemed now to be the order of the evening with all except poor Arthur. I thought that Lamar would actually sow the seeds of a future quarrel, while discussing something relating to the West. How introduced I do not know, unless Lamar was talking of Damon. However, Arthur stated one fact which surprised us all, and of which we had been all equally ignorant. He stated that Kentucky had one more college than any other State in the Union; half as many as all New-England; and more than North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama, united. "While these things were going on, I heard a gentle and scarcely perceptible step behind me, on the carpet; and seeing the other gentlemen rise, I mechanically rose also--to be electrified by the vision of Miss St. Clair. She was pale and trembling, but far more beautiful than I had ever seen her. It was not the beauty of the waxen figure, or the picture; it was the beauty of feeling, sensibility, and tenderness. You have seen that little plant which shrinks at the rude touch of man, Randolph; that should be her emblem.