That night there was to be a large party at the house of Mr. Mortimer, whom Leffie had mentioned as second to the Laceys in wealth.  Mr. Mortimer was the uncle at whose house Florence Woodburn was visiting, and the party was given in honor of her arrival, and partly to celebrate Mabel Mortimer’s birthday.  Mabel was an intelligent, accomplished girl, and besides being something of a beauty, was the heiress expectant of several hundred thousand.  This constituted her quite a belle, and for three or four years past she and Dr. Lacey had been given to each other by the clever gossips of New Orleans.  Mr. Lacey senior was also rather anxious that his son should marry Mabel; so Julia was not far out of the way when she wrote to Fanny that Dr. Lacey’s parents wished to secure a match between him and a New Orleans belle.  Had Dr. Lacey never seen Fanny, he possibly might have wedded Mabel.  But his was a heart which could love but once, and although the object of his love should prove untrue, his affections could not easily be transferred to another; so that it was all in vain that Mabel Mortimer, on the evening of the party, stood before her mirror arranging and rearranging the long curls of her dark hair and the folds of her rich white satin, wondering all the while if Dr. Lacey would approve her style of dress.

Turning to Florence, she said, “Cousin, did you see Dr. Lacey while he was in Frankfort?”

“No; I did not,” answered Florence; “but I do hope he will be here tonight, for I am all impatient to see this lion who has turned all your heads.”

A slight shade of displeasure passed over Mabel’s fine features, but quickly casting it off she said, “Why are you so anxious, Florence?  Have you any designs on him?  If you have, they will do you no good, for I have a prior claim, and you must not interfere.”

“Dear me, how charmingly you look!” said Florence.  “But, fair coz, do not be too sanguine.  Suppose I should tell you that far off in old Kentuck, as the negroes say, there is a golden-haired little girl, who has—­”

“Stop, stop,” said Mabel.  “You shall not tell me.  I will not hear it.”

At that instant the doorbell rang, and in a moment several young girls entered the dressing room, and in the chattering and laughing and fixing which followed, Mabel forgot what her cousin had been saying.  After a time the young ladies descended to the spacious drawing rooms, which were rapidly filling with the elite of the city.

Mabel’s eye took in at a glance all the gentlemen, and she felt chagrined to find Dr. Lacey absent.  “What if he should not come?” thought she.  “The party would be a dreadfully dull affair to me.”  Some time after, she missed Florence and two or three other girls, and thinking they were in the parlor above, she went in search of them.  She found them on the balcony not far from the gentlemen’s dressing room, the windows of which were open.  As she approached them, they called out, “Oh, here you are, Mabel!  Florence is just going to tell us about Dr. Lacey’s sweetheart.”