"Youth, love and beauty, all were hers,
Why should she not be happy?"
Where would you like to go now, reader? We are desirous to take you by the path that will lead through this story by the shortest cut, and, as we dare not doubt but that will be the course of all others most grateful to your tastes and feelings, we'll clear Texas at a bound, for there'll blow a whistling "Norther" there soon, we apprehend, and that would tangle our hair worse than it is tangled now, and we have not had time to comb it since this story commenced. So, imagine "Effie," dear reader, with her brown locks wisped up in the most unbecoming manner possible, a calico morning-gown wrapped loosely about her, and not over clean, her fingers grimmed with pencil-dust, and her nose too, perhaps—for she has a fashion of rubbing that useful organ, for ideas, or something else, we know not what.
Just imagine this, reader, and if you don't throw down the story in actual disgust, you'll be more anxious to get through it than we are even.
Now away with episode, and here are we in the fair "Crescent City" again, at the palace-like residence of Augustus Lester, Esq. The lord of the mansion is at home, reclining on a silken sofa, which is drawn before one of the deep, bloom-shaded windows of the elegant drawing-room. He is in genial, after-dinner mood, and that fairy-looking being, sitting by his side on a low ottoman, is our former friend, Winnie Morris. But she bears another name now, for she has been three months a wife—Augustus Lester's girl-bride!
Were that affectionate sister's misgivings of her bachelor brother's intentions toward that wild-cat girl altogether chimerical, then? Present appearances would indicate them not to have been altogether groundless; but really, when the fair Mary fled so precipitately, the idea of making Winnie Morris his bride had never entered her brother's cranium. He had regarded her as a pretty child, and delighted in her sunshiny, buoyant spirit, and felt he would like to keep her near to cheer and enliven his mansion; but from the moment he saw her presiding with so much quiet dignity and grace at his table, on that eventful morning, he resolved to win her heart if possible. The task was by no means difficult, for an object to which we look up with gratitude and reverence, 'tis next to impossible not to love. She forgot, in her devotion to the lofty, high-souled man, her childish fancy for the frivolous-minded boy, and when Wayland, on her bridal morning, asked mischievously, "Where was Jack Camford vanished?" she replied, "In a gold mine beyond the seas, I suppose, brother; but why mention his name to make discord on this happy hour?"
"It is strange Wayland does not return," remarked Augustus, at length, rousing from a light doze, and drawing his young wife close to his side.
"I thought you were fast asleep, Auguste," said she; "and here I have been fanning you so attentively, to keep the mosquitoes away. Well, it is time for Wayland to come, isn't it? He has been absent more than two months. You know how he chided me for breaking the promise I made to be mistress of that pretty cottage he proposed to build up in Tennessee. Perhaps he is erecting it, and intends to dwell there in proud, regretful solitude."
"Or, perhaps he is in search of some fair lady to be its mistress, who may prove less recreant to her promise," suggested Lester.
"May be so," returned Winnie, laughing.