ma, where is your list? Here, Oscar, this is a beautiful pen."

This important business proceeded rapidly, and as the party were in high spirits they commented jestingly on the various names read aloud by Mrs. Lyndsay.

"Mrs. Bradshaw and family. One large loaf and four small ones. Very light baked and very heavy, with their pale hair and colorless eyes."

"Mr. and Mrs. Douglass."

"Mrs. Douglass is like a huge poppy, in her green velvet dress and scarlet turban. She always puts me to sleep."

"Poor Mr. Douglass looks as if the influence had superinduced a chronic state of somnolency, and he will never wake up again perfectly as long as he lives."

"Do, Oscar, add a few more long words. If you were to repeat all that to him with a grave face, he would say, 'Just so, my dear sir; you have described my case exactly!"

"Mr. and Mrs. Ludlow. How faded she is,"

said Mrs. Lyndsay. "I remember her a brilliantlooking girl."

"Faded, indeed," echoed Matilda; "all color washed out with weeping for her lost beauty."

A few more names passed without comment; the pile of notes grew under the hands of the busy writers.

"Colonel Baron Gaspard de Brie," read Mrs. Lyndsay, with a little elevation of voice.

"Aunt Lyndsay," exclaimed Oscar, “you are not going to invite him!"

"Why should I not? He will be a great acquisition."

"He is very dissipated, aunt; he frequents gambling saloons, and is the companion of the fastest men about town."

"We have nothing to do with his companions or amusements, Oscar; he is a perfect gentleman."

"I do not consider any man a gentleman whose moral conduct is so very objectionable," persisted Oscar.

"But foreigners have a very different code

from ours," returned Mrs. Lyndsay. "His manners are remarkably polished, he is a distinguished officer, a baron, and brought, they say, excellent introductory letters. The Puritan leaven works still in our opinions, Oscar, in this country."

"I hope it long may, ma'am. I think we can hardly be too strict in some matters."

"In what, for instance?" asked his aunt. "The introduction to our young ladies of distinguished foreigners, about whom we can know very little, except that their code of morals is very different from our own," answered Oscar, with a glance at Matilda.

Matilda answered the look. "You are very prejudiced, Oscar; you must wear that off in your travels; you will be charmed with the baron, when you see him."

"Would you like me to resemble him? to improve myself by such a distinguished model?"

"You are not quite perfect yet," she answered, with a little laugh and look that at once dis

pelled all his feelings of annoyance. But the baron was invited.

แ

Oscar," said Julia, "you must look your very best, and make your last appearance as creditable as possible. I suppose you will attend no more parties before you sail. Are you not glad to go?"

"Glad and sorry," said he. "I can hardly realize that I am going away for two years. I have always longed to travel; yet, now that my wish is attained, my mind dwells less on the

pleasure I anticipate than on the changes that 1 may happen before I return."

"That is only because you are out of health. It always makes people apprehensive and very nervous."

"I am willing to hope so," said he, smiling, "although ladies are usually considered to be the only persons privileged to be nervous. Now, girls, have we finished?"

The list was compared and found correct, and, with many thanks from his cousins, Oscar departed. His walk home was not particularly

agreeable. A new direction had been given to his apprehensions of change. He called his fears absurd, ridiculous, repeated that a party acquaintance is nothing after all, and finished by recurring to his first thought, "Why will aunt Lyndsay invite that baron?"

Matilda was but eighteen; fond of company, and naturally pleased by the admiration excited by her beauty. Mrs. Lyndsay did not disapprove of the partial engagement that existed between her daughter and Oscar; but she was worldly in the extreme, and would leave no means untried to secure for her children wealth or position, which constituted all she knew of happiness. What was to be the end? Were the good and evil qualities so balanced in Matilda's character, that her mother's influence would turn the scale? Would she forget him? or worse, remembering, would she deliberately choose falsehood for truth?-show for happiness?

Oscar was glad to turn away from perplexities that he could not solve, as he entered his own home.