“Before you go,” he says, “listen to what I thought of when we came down that hillside this evening with the moonlight and delicate shadows all about us.” His lissome fingers sweep the keys, and the next instant we hear the fairies lightly tripping over the greensward in the wonderful _scherzo_ of Berlioz’s “Queen Mab.” The fairy-like measure seems to us—who have so lately looked on the scene which suggested it to the musician’s recollection—filled with a double grace and sentiment. Queen Mab’s court, if we had surprised them at their revels, could scarcely have charmed us more. When the strain ceases, Sylvia looks at the musician with her eyes shining. “Whenever I think of this evening,” she says, “I shall always think of that.” “And whenever I hear or play it, I shall think of _you_,” says the young man. “I am afraid this is going to be a very serious flirtation,” I say to myself, as I walk across the room to where Aunt Markham is sitting, trying to look interested in a conversation on mineralogy, which Eric is holding with a gentleman well known for his devotion to that science. I am rather inclined to like mineralogy—at least to the extent of taking an interest in probable diamonds and emeralds—so I join the group, and receive a great deal of information on the mineral wealth of Western North Carolina, which unhappily I forget as soon as it is acquired. Adèle Dupont is, meanwhile, the centre of a group at the other end of the apartment. She is charmingly dressed, and her gay, vivacious manners have a fascination which the men surrounding her plainly feel. Charley is not among them. Music may have charms to soothe the savage, but not the jealous, breast. Some time since he muttered something about smoking, and took his departure. In a lull of the conversation around me, I hear Adèle’s light tones addressing her court. “What birds of passage you all seem to be! No two of you come from the same point, no two of you are going to the same point. It reminds me of the old nursery game—‘One flew east, and one flew west, and one flew over the eagle’s nest.’” “I wish you would fly with us to-morrow,” says one of the gentlemen, gallantly. “But with the best disposition in the world to be obliging, I could not fly with _all_ of you,” she answers, laughing. When I retire presently and fall asleep, my dreams are a strange _mélange_ of blue mountains and tripping fairies, of Aladdin’s garden—the mineralogy is accountable for this—and men in strange guise flying east and west and north and south over endless peaks. Notwithstanding these freaks of fancy, my slumbers are sound and sweet, for Buncombe nights are delicious in their coolness—nights of which to dream in the heat-parched, mosquito-haunted low country.