“Of course, why shouldn’t she?” asked Henry; and Ella replied, “I don’t know,—­it seems so funny to see Mary here, don’t it?”

Before Henry could answer, a young man of his acquaintance touched his shoulder, saying, “Lincoln, who is that splendid-looking girl with Miss Selden?  I haven’t seen a finer face in Boston, for many a day.”

“That?  Oh, that’s Miss Howard, from Chicopee.  An intimate friend of our family.  Allow me the pleasure of introducing you,” and Henry walked away, leaving Ella to the tender mercies of Rose, who, as one after another quitted her side, and went over to the “enemy,” grew very angry, wondering if folks were bewitched, and hoping Ida Selden “felt better, now that she’d made so many notice her protegee.”

Later in the evening, William Bender came, and immediately Jenny began to talk to him of Mary, and the impression she was making.  Placing her hand familiarly upon his arm, as though that were its natural resting place, she led him towards a group, of which Mary seemed the centre of attraction.  Near her stood Henry Lincoln, bending so low as to threaten serious injury to his fashionable pants, and redoubling his flattering compliments, in proportion as Mary grew colder, and more reserved in her manner towards him.  Silly and conceited as he was, he could not help noticing how differently she received William Bender from what she had himself.  But all in good time, thought he, glancing at Ella, to see how she was affected by his desertion of her, and his flirtation with her sister.  She was standing a little apart from any one, and with her elbow resting upon a marble stand, her cheeks flushed, and her eyelashes moist with the tears she dared not shed, she was watching him with feelings in which more of real pain than jealousy was mingled; for Ella was weak and simple-hearted, and loved Henry Lincoln far better than such as he deserved to be loved.

“Of what are you thinking, Ella?” asked Rose, who finding herself nearly alone, felt willing to converse with almost any one.

At the sound of her voice Ella looked up, and coming quickly to her side, said, “It’s so dull and lonesome here, I wish I’d staid at home.”

In her heart Rose wished so too, but she was too proud to acknowledge it, and feeling unusually kind towards Ella, whose uneasiness she readily understood, she replied, “Oh, I see you are jealous of Henry, but he’s only trying to teaze you, for he can’t be interested in that awkward thing.”

“But he is.  I ’most know he is,” returned Ella, with a trembling of the voice she tried in vain to subdue; and then, fearing she could not longer restrain her emotion, she suddenly broke away from Rose, and ran hastily up to the dressing-room.

Nothing of all this escaped Henry’s quick eye, and as sundry unpaid bills for wine, brandy, oyster suppers, and livery, came looming up before his mind, he thought proper to make some amends for his neglect.  Accordingly when Ella returned to the drawing-room, he offered her his arm, asking “what made her eyes so red,” and slyly pressing her hand, when she averted her face saying, “Nothing,—­they weren’t red.”