When Farnham arrived at his house, it was already pretty well filled with guests.  Mr. and Mrs. Temple were at the door, shaking hands with their friends as they arrived, she with a pleasant smile and word from her black eyes and laughing mouth, and he in grave and speechless hospitality.

“Good-evening, Mr. Farnham!” said the good-natured lady.  “So glad to see you.  I began to be alarmed.  So did the young ladies.  They were afraid you had not returned.  Show yourself in the drawing-room and dispel their fears.  Oh, Mr. Harrison, I am so glad you resolved to stay over.”

Farnham gave way to the next comer, and said to Mr. Temple, who had pressed his hand in silence: 

“Did you want to see me for anything special to-day?”

Mrs. Temple looked up at the word, and her husband said: 

“No; I merely wanted you to take a drive with me.”

Another arrival claimed Mrs. Temple’s attention, and as Farnham moved away, Temple half-whispered in his ear, “Don’t go away till I get a chance to speak to you.  There is merry and particular bloom of h——­ to pay.”

The phrase, while vivid, was not descriptive, and Farnham could not guess what it meant.  Perhaps something had gone wrong in the jockey club; perhaps Goldsmith Maid was off her feed; perhaps pig-iron had gone up or down a dollar a ton.  These were all subjects of profound interest to Temple and much less to Farnham; so he waited patiently the hour of revelation, and looked about the drawing-room to see who was there.

It was the usual drawing-room of provincial cities.  The sofas and chairs were mostly occupied by married women, who drew a scanty entertainment from gossip with each other, from watching the proceedings of the spinsters, and chiefly, perhaps, from a consciousness of good clothes.  The married men stood grouped in corners and talked of their every-day affairs.  The young people clustered together in little knots, governed more or less by natural selection—­ only the veterans of several seasons pairing off into the discreet retirement of stairs and hall angles.  At the further end of the long drawing-room, Farnham’s eyes at last lighted upon the object of his quest.  Alice sat in the midst of a group of young girls who had intrenched themselves in a corner of the room, and defied all the efforts of skirmishing youths, intent upon flirtation, to dislodge them.  They seemed to be amusing themselves very well together, and the correct young men in white cravats and pointed shoes came, chatted, and drifted away.  They were the brightest and gayest young girls of the place; and it would have been hard to detect any local color in them.  Young as they were, they had all had seasons in Paris and in Washington; some of them knew the life of that most foreign of all capitals, New York.  They nearly all spoke French and German better than they did English, for their accent in those languages was very sweet and winning in its incorrectness, while their English was high-pitched and nasal, and a little too loud in company.  They were as pretty as girls are anywhere, and they wore dresses designed by Mr. Worth, or his New York rivals, Loque and Chiffon; but they occasionally looked across the room with candid and intelligent envy at maidens of less pretensions, who were better dressed by the local artists.