still talking.

The next morning, I noticed that Mathilde spent more than usual time and attention upon her toilette. She looked very pretty—when did she not?—in her embroidered cambric morning dress, with no ornament but her jetty ringlets flowing down each side her freshly-blooming face.

When we went downstairs, there was Mr. Howard waiting in the hall, to offer Mathilde his arm to the breakfast table.

Afterward at the ladies bowling-alley who but Mr. Howard stood at Mathilde's elbow to hand the balls? Who took her in to dinner? Who made a horseblock of his knee and a stepping-stone of the palm of his hand to lift Mathilde into her saddle? Who attended her in her afternoon ride? In her evening walk? In the duet with the piano accompaniment at night?

Howard—still Howard!

Until after several weeks of this association, at last papa opened his eyes and inquired first of himself and next of his host:

"Who is this Mr. Howard, who is paying such very particular attention to my daughter?"

"Mr. Howard, sir; Mr. Howard is a very talented young mechanic of Boston," answered the proprietor.

"A—what?" questioned the astonished old gentleman.

"A very accomplished young machinist, and mathematical instrument maker, sir, who has realized quite a handsome fortune by his patented improvement in——"

"The foul fiend!" exclaimed the old aristocrat, throwing up his hands in consternation, as he trotted off.

His daughter talking, dancing, riding, flirting with a mechanic! Oh! horror, horror, horror!

The result of this was, that after Mr. Legare's perturbed feelings had become somewhat calmed he called for his bill, settled it, took four places in the morning coach, ordered his servants to pack up, and the next day set out for the South.

He was very much disturbed; Mrs. Legare said nothing, but poor Mathilde was miserable, having been made to feel that she had unwittingly brought discredit upon herself and all her family.

Mr. Legare left Mathilde and myself at our school, and with his wife proceeded to Louisiana.

I soon saw that the warm-hearted young Southern maiden really was, or believed herself to be, the subject of a deep and unhappy attachment; she became reserved to all, even to me, and her health suffered. As weeks grew into months her indisposition increased. One day her emotion broke the bounds of reserve, and throwing herself into my arms, she exclaimed:

"Oh, Agnes! if Frank would only write to me I should not feel so wretched!"

"Frank? who is Frank, my love?" I inquired in surprise, for I had never heard this name among our acquaintances.

She blushed deeply. "Oh! I mean Mr. Howard, you know! Frank Howard."

"No—I did not know! Has it come to this? and do you call him Frank? And do you, perhaps, correspond with him? Oh, Mathilde, Mathilde, my dear! take care!"

"Oh! no, no, I do not correspond with him! never have done so! he never even asked me! but after pa got so high with him, he looked mournful and dignified, and took leave of me! Oh! he might write to me."

"Mathilde, knowing your father's sentiments, he would not, as a man of honor, commence a correspondence with you. But tell me, dear, how far this affair had gone?"

"Oh! very far indeed; he was going to ask me of papa that very day we left!"

"Wait, Mathilde! you are so young! if this is anything more serious than a passing fancy on both sides, he will delay until you leave school, and then he will first seek you at your father's house. This is the only course for a man of honor in such a case, you are aware."

"Um-m! little hope in seeking me at my father's house, with my father's estimate of a mechanic! But I do not the least believe that Frank Howard is a mechanic! He does not look like one!"

"Nonsense, my dear Mathilde! he is an intelligent Boston mechanic, who has made a valuable invention that has brought him a fortune; that is all about it."

Still Mathilde's health waned, and at last the principal of our academy wrote to her parents, who came, and finding her condition more precarious than they had anticipated, removed her from school and carried her home. Mathilde could not bring against her friend the same charge that she had brought against her lover; for I requested a frequent correspondence, and faithfully kept up my part of it.

I remained at Newton for nearly twelve months after Mathilde had left.

And this time, passed in so great monotony by me, was full of event for Mathilde and those connected with her. In the first place, she accompanied her friends on a short visit to Europe, and returning, entered society at New Orleans with some eclat.

Then followed for her father a succession of losses, one growing out of another, until his fortune was so reduced as to make it necessary for him to retrench and change his whole style of living.

Under such circumstances, his pride would not permit him to remain in that part of the country where for so many years he had lived grand seigneur.

His wife was a Virginian by birth and education, and in changing her home preferred to return to her native State. Therefore Mr. Legare purchased a small estate lying within a fertile gap of the Alleghanies, to which, in the spring of the next year, he removed his family.

Up to this time Mathilde had heard nothing directly from her Saratoga lover, but had learned, through the newspapers, that he had been nominated to represent his district in the National House of Representatives.

Hoping much from the two circumstances of her own reduction in worldly fortune and her lover's elevation in social rank, which must bring them nearer together in position, she had called the attention of her father to the announcement of Mr. Howard's nomination; but her fond expectations were soon dissipated by the old aristocrat's comment:

"Oh, yes, my dear, I see! Any upstart can get into Congress now. Really a private station is the seat of honor; but the comfort remains that a patrician by birth, is still a patrician, no matter how low his worldly fortunes; a plebeian is still a plebeian, even though accident or caprice may constitute him a legislator."

"And now what shall I do, Agnes?" wrote Mathilde, after recounting these things.

"Hope! If Mr. Howard is as constant as you appear to be, you have everything to expect from time and change ordered by Providence," was my written reply.

I finally left school at the commencement of the summer vacation following the spring in which Mr. Legare's family removed to their mountain home in Virginia.

It was just before the ensuing Christmas that I received an invitation from Mathilde to come up and spend the holidays with her at her father's new home.

In extending this invitation, she wrote: "I do not know, dear Agnes, how much or how little you may feel disposed to credit these modern, so-called spiritual manifestations, these 'rappings,' 'table-tippings,' etc., but I know your strong penchant for the supernatural and your inveterate habit of ghost-hunting, and I do assure you, if it will be any inducement for you to come to us, that our home contains as inexplicable a mystery as ever frightened human habitants away, and doomed a dwelling-place to desolation and decay, and this haunting presence infests a house in a neighborhood, as yet innocent of spirit-rappings, table-tippings, and 'sich like diviltries,' as it is of railroads, steamboats and telegraph wires. But I shall say no more of this mystery until I see you 'face to face' except this, that even my unbelieving pa talks of selling the place unless the nuisance is explained and removed."

I think that it was the existence of this darkly intimated spectre that fascinated me to the point of accepting Mathilde's invitation. Ghost-hunting was my one weakness—perhaps I should say monomania. I secretly hoped that there might be a haunted chamber in the old house and that they might put me to sleep in it; furthermore, that I might be