“O, it is strange,” said Mr. Cunningham, “that any one can willingly exchange them for crowded rooms, and pestilential vapors, such as we are now inhaling! There is nothing to be gained in such a company as this. Take any dozen, or half dozen of them by themselves, and you might stand some chance to be entertained and instructed; but bring them all together, and each one seems to think it a _duty_ to give himself up to frivolity and nonsense. I doubt whether there have been a hundred sensible words uttered here to-night, except by yonder circle, of which Mrs. Westbury seems to be the centre. There seems to be something like rational conversation _there_.” Mr. Westbury turned his eyes, and saw that Julia was surrounded by the _elite_ of the party—who all seemed to be listening with pleased attention to a conversation that was evidently carried on between herself and Mr. Eveleth, a gentleman who was universally acknowledged as one of the first in rank and talent in the city. For a minute Mr. Westbury suffered his eyes to rest on Julia. Her cheek was suffused with the beautiful carmine tint of modesty, and her eyes were beaming with intellectual light—while over her features was spread a slight shade of care, as if the heart were not perfectly at ease. “She certainly looks very well,” was Mr. Westbury's thought; and his feeling was one of gratified pride, that she who was inevitably his wife, did not find her proper level amongst the light, the vain, and the frivolous. * * * * * “You have been delightfully attentive to your wife, this evening, my dear,” said Mrs. Cunningham to her husband, as soon as they were seated in their carriage on their way home. “I am not sensible of having neglected you, Lucy,” said Mr. Cunningham. “No—I suppose not; nor of having been very attentive to another!” “I certainly am not. To whom do you allude?” “I suppose,” said Mrs. Cunningham, “that Mr. Westbury is equally unconscious of having had his attention engrossed by any particular individual.” “You surely cannot mean that I was particularly attentive to Miss Eldon, Lucy?” “O, how could I mean so?” said Mrs. Cunningham, with a kind of laugh that expressed any thing rather than pleasure, or good humor. “I really wonder how you came to recollect having seen such a person as Miss Eldon to-night!” “Your remark concerning Westbury brought her to my mind,” said Mr. Cunningham. “How strange!” said his wife, “And how extreme that young lady's mortification must have been, that she could not detain two newly married gentlemen near her for more than an hour and a half at one time! Seriously, Mr. Cunningham, the company must have thought that you and Westbury were striving which should do her most homage.”