Here thinking she was telling too much, Ida suddenly stopped, and as the tea bell just then rang, she started up, saying, “Oh, I forgot that father was waiting in the parlor to see you.  I’ve said so much about you that his curiosity is quite roused, but I can introduce you at the table just as well.”  Our lady readers will pardon Mary if before meeting Mr. Selden she gave herself a slight inspection in the long mirror, which hung in her dressing room.  Passing the brush several times through her glossy hair, and smoothing down the folds of her neatly fitting merino, she concluded that she looked well enough for a traveller, and with slightly heightened color, followed Ida into the supper room, where she found assembled Mrs. Mason, Aunt Martha, and Mr. Selden.  The moment her eye fell upon the latter, she recognized the same kindly beaming eye and pleasant smile, which had won her childish heart, when on board the Windermere he patted her head, as George told how kind she had been to him.

“We have met before, I believe,” said he, and warmly shaking her hand he bade her welcome to Boston.

Then seating her by his side at the table he managed by his kind attentions to make both her and Mrs. Mason feel perfectly at home.  Aunt Martha, too, was exceedingly polite, but after what Ida had told her, Mary could not help feeling somewhat embarrassed in her presence.  This, however, gradually wore away, and before the evening was over she began to feel very much at home, and to converse with Aunt Martha as freely and familiarly as with Ida.

The next morning between ten and eleven the door bell rang, and in a moment Jenny Lincoln, whose father’s house was just opposite, came tripping into the parlor.  She had lost in a measure that rotundity of person so offensive to her mother, and it seemed to Mary that there was a thoughtful expression on her face never seen there before, but in all other respects, she was the same affectionate, merry-hearted Jenny.

“I just this minute heard you were here, and came over just as I was,” said she, glancing at the same time at her rich, though rather untidy morning wrapper.  After asking Mary if she wasn’t sorry George had gone, and if she expected to find Mr. Stuart, she said, “I suppose you know Ella is here, and breaking every body’s heart, of course.  She went to a concert with us last evening, and looked perfectly beautiful.  Henry says she is the handsomest girl he ever saw, and I do hope she’ll make something of him, but I’m afraid he is only trifling with her, just as he tries to do with every body.”

“I am afraid so too,” said Ida, “but now Mary has come perhaps he’ll divide his attentions between the two.”

If there was a person in the world whom Mary thoroughly detested, it was Henry Lincoln, and the idea of his trifling with her, made her eyes sparkle and flash so indignantly that Ida noticed it, and secretly thought that Henry Lincoln would for once find his match.  After a time Mary turned to Jenny, saying, “You haven’t told me a word about,—­about William Bender.  Is he well?”