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Rh at last by the servant's coming in with the name of a gentleman. The name of the gentleman was Caspar Goodwood ; he was a straight young man from Boston, who had known Miss Archer for the last twelvemonth, and who, thinking her the most beautiful young woman of her time, had pronounced the time, according to the rule I have hinted at, a foolish period of history. He sometimes wrote to Isabel, and he had lately written to her h"L^ New York. She had thought it very possible he would come itr had, indeed, all the rainy day been vaguely expecting him. Nevertheless, now that she learned he was there, she felt no eagerness to receive him. He Avas the finest young man she had ever seen, was, indeed, quite a magnificent young man; he filled her with a certain feeling of respect which she had never entertained for any one else. He was supposed by the world in general to wish to marry her ; but this of course was between themselves. It at least may be affirmed that he had travelled from New York to Albany expressly to see her; having learned in the former city, where he was spending a few days and where he had hoped to find her, that she was still at the capital. Isabel delayed for some minutes to go to him ; she moved about the room with a certain feeling of embarrassment. But at last she presented herself, and found him standing near the lamp. He was tall, strong, and somewhat stiff; he was also lean and brown. He was not especially good-looking, but his physiognomy had an air of requesting your attention, which it rewarded or not, according to the charm you found in a blue eye of remarkable fixedness and a jaw of the somewhat angular mould, which is supposed to bespeak resolution. Isabel said to herself that it bespoke resolution to-night ; but, nevertheless, an hour later, Caspar Goodwood, who had arrived hopeful as well as resolute, took his way back to his lodging with the feeling of a man defeated. He was not, however, a man to be discouraged by a defeat.



RALPH TOUCHETT was a philosopher, but nevertheless he knocked at his mother's door (at a quarter to seven) with a good deal of eagerness. Even pnilosophers have their preferences, and it must be admitted that of his progenitors his father ministered most to his sense of the sweetness of filial depend- ence. His father, as he had often said to himself, was the more motherly ; his mother, on the other hand, was paternal, and 