I thought Mathilde, with her tall and beautifully rounded form, stately head, pure olive complexion, shaded by jet-black ringlets, and lighted up by laughing black eyes, bridged over with arch and flexible black eyebrows—would attract some attention.
Not a bit of it! Heiress and beauty, as she was, Mathilde Legare was merely one in the crowd. There were hundreds with equal or greater claims to distinction. And so our beautiful Mathilde was not enthroned. Of course she soon attracted around her a circle of old and new acquaintances and had from them a due share of attention.
Among the first of these new acquaintances was a young gentleman of the name of Howard. His introduction to our party, without being romantic, was certainly marked by singularity. It occurred the third day after our arrival, at one of the weekly balls at the United States. It happened to be a fine, cool evening, and the assembly upon the occasion was unusually large. The saloon was quite crowded, leaving but little room for the motions of the dancers.
Mathilde was looking very beautiful that night. She wore a dress with a three-fold skirt of very fine, transparent thale over rose-colored silk, and which with every motion floated around her graceful form with a mistlike softness and lightness; a bertha and falls of the finest lace veiled her rounded arms and neck. She wore no jewels, but a wreath of rich white heliotrope crowned her jetty ringlets, and a bouquet of the same odoriferous flowers employed her slender fingers.
Yes! she was looking very lovely. Nevertheless, Mathilde, as well as myself, seemed destined to adorn the sofa as a "wall flower" all the evening, for set after set formed until every one was complete. The music struck up and the dancing commenced, and still no one came near us, nor did we even so much as see, within the range of our vision, one single person that we knew.
Mathilde voted this "the very stupidest ball" she was ever at, and hoped her papa would never come to Saratoga again.
I, for my part, fell into the study of faces, and through them into the study of character, and through that into dreaming.
Presently a head—start not gentle reader, there was a living body attached to it—attracted my particular attention. It was not because it was above every other head present—though had not this been the case I should not at that distance have seen it—nor was it because it was a very handsome one—for there were others much handsomer; but it was a very remarkable, characteristic, individual sort of head—a monarchical head, with a forehead that in its commanding height and breadth seemed the natural throne of intellectual sovereignty, with a strongly and clearly-marked nose and mouth, with eyes full of calm power—that surveyed the multitude below with the quiet interest of a king inspecting his army on some festive parade day.
"Magnus Apollo!" were the words that sprang alive to my lips as I laid my hand upon the soft, white arm of Mathilde and called her attention to this stranger.
"Hush! he is looking this way," said my companion, blushing and casting down her eyes.