“Yes, yes! see it all through,” said Mr. Van Astrachan.  “Young people must be young.  It’s all right enough, and you won’t miss my Polly after you get fairly into it near so much as I shall.  I’ll sit up for her till twelve o’clock, and read my paper.”

Rose was at first, to say the truth, bewildered and surprised by the perfect labyrinth of fairy-land which Charlie Ferrola’s artistic imagination had created in the Follingsbee mansion.

Initiated people, who had travelled in Europe, said it put them in mind of the “Jardin Mabille;” and those who had not were reminded of some of the wonders of “The Black Crook.”  There were apartments turned into bowers and grottoes, where the gas-light shimmered behind veils of falling water, and through pendant leaves of all sorts of strange water-plants of tropical regions.  There were all those wonderful leaf-plants of every weird device of color, which have been conjured up by tricks of modern gardening, as Rappacini is said to have created his strange garden in Padua.  There were beds of hyacinths and crocuses and tulips, made to appear like living gems by the jets of gas-light which came up among them in glass flowers of the same form.  Far away in recesses were sofas of soft green velvet turf, overshadowed by trailing vines, and illuminated with moonlight-softness by hidden alabaster lamps.  The air was heavy with the perfume of flowers, and the sound of music and dancing from the ball-room came to these recesses softened by distance.

The Follingsbee mansion occupied a whole square of the city; and these enchanted bowers were created by temporary enlargements of the conservatory covering the ground of the garden.  With money, and the Croton Water-works, and all the New-York greenhouses at disposal, nothing was impossible.

There was in this reception no vulgar rush or crush or jam.  The apartments opened were so extensive, and the attractions in so many different directions, that there did not appear to be a crowd anywhere.

There was no general table set, with the usual liabilities of rush and crush; but four or five well-kept rooms, fragrant with flowers and sparkling with silver and crystal, were ready at any hour to minister to the guest whatever delicacy or dainty he or she might demand; and light-footed waiters circulated with noiseless obsequiousness through all the rooms, proffering dainties on silver trays.

Mrs. Van Astrachan and Rose at first found themselves walking everywhere, with a fresh and lively interest.  It was something quite out of the line of the good lady’s previous experience, and so different from any thing she had ever seen before, as to keep her in a state of placid astonishment.  Rose, on the other hand, was delighted and excited; the more so that she could not help perceiving that she herself amid all these objects of beauty was followed by the admiring glances of many eyes.