“Have I seen her in my dreams?” I murmured, “or is she the star of my destiny which intuition thus reveals, that her beauty should so thrill me?”
A romantic youth, fresh from college, on the lookout for adventures, with a very large fund of admiration, on which beauty could check at sight; is it a wonder I was in love a second after this bright vision of loveliness floated by?
I waited for them to come round again, but I saw the car stop on the other side, and hurried through the crowd only to see them enter a gold mounted phæton, drawn by a splendid pair of blood bays, the driver and footman in liveries almost too gorgeous for Republican America.
“May the Fates grant he may only be a brother! They look alike,” I muttered, as I walked back to the hotel.
I sought for them in vain during the day around the hotel, though I thought once I saw the black moustache behind the green baize door of the billiard room, but, on entering, I could not find it.
That afternoon Mrs. Marshman and party came up from Albany, and took rooms also at the Union. How cordial was Miss Finnock in her manner towards me! and how long she let her hand remain in mine when I shook hands with her! Poor, little cold hand! I felt as if I was pressing a frog with five legs!
The ladies were too much fatigued to go to the dance that night, so Finnock and I walked across to Congress Hall after tea. I told him of the wonderful beauty I had seen in the morning, and asked if he could not contrive to get an introduction for us.
“Oh, yes,” he said, carelessly, “presyume so; she’s the same Monte wrote me about. Devilish pretty, rich, and so forth. Engaged to that fellow, Monte says. Pious old couple to take care of her. But yonder’s Monte now.”
He carried me up to a throng of foppish young men who were lounging on the steps of the hotel. They spoke, after Finnock’s introduction, with a cool kind of condescension that irritated, and, to a certain extent, humiliated me. While in my heart I despised them for their foppish uselessness, yet I felt they somewhat looked down upon me as being from the country, and I desired their attention and consideration more than I did the esteem of the most prominent gentlemen of my acquaintance; such is pride!