'Admirably,' replied Josephine—'it is exactly suitable to your figure. Ah, mamma, your days of conquest are not over yet.'

'And yours have just begun, my dear. Yours is a glorious destiny, Josephine; beautiful and rich, you can select a husband from among the handsomest and most desirable young gentlemen in the city. But you must profit by my experience: do not be in haste to unite yourself in marriage to a man who, when he becomes your husband, will restrict you in the enjoyment of those voluptuous pleasures in which you now take such delight. I 'married in haste and repented at leisure;' after my union with your father, I found him to be a cold formalist and canting religionist, continually boring me with his lectures on the sins and folly of 'fashionable dissipation,' as he termed the elegant amusements suitable to our wealth and rank and discoursing upon the pleasures of the domestic circle, and such humbugs. All this was exceedingly irksome to me, accustomed as I was to one unvarying round of excitement; but your father was as firm as he was puritanical—and obstinately interposed his authority as a husband, to prevent my indulging in my favorite entertainments. This state of affairs continued, my dear, until you attained the age of sixteen, when you began to feel a distaste for the insipidity of a domestic life, and longed for a change.—Our positions were then precisely similar: we both were debarred from the delights of gay society, for which we so ardently longed. One obstacle, and one only, lay in our way; that obstacle was your father—my husband. We were both sensible that we never could enjoy ourselves in our own way, while he lived; his death alone would release us from the condition of thralldom in which we were placed—but as his constitution was robust and his health invariably good, the agreeable prospect of his death was very remote—and we might have continued all our lives under the despotic rules of his stern morality, had we not rid ourselves of him by—'

'For Heaven's sake, mother,' said Josephine, hastily—'don't allude to that!'

'And why not,' asked the mother, calmly. 'You surely do not regret the act which removed our inexorable jailer, and opened to us such flowery avenues of pleasure? Ah, Josephine, the deed was admirably planned and skillfully executed. No one suspects—'

'Once more, mother, I entreat you to make no further allusion to that subject; it is disagreeable—painful to me,' interrupted the daughter, impatiently. 'Besides, sometimes the walls have ears.'

'Well, well, child—I will say no more about it. Let us now dress.'

Josephine, having arranged her clustering hair in a style as masculine as possible, proceeded to invest herself in the boyish habiliments which she had provided. First, she drew on over her luscious charms, a delicately embroidered shirt, of snowy whiteness, and then put on a splendid cravat, in the tasteful fold of which glittered a magnificent diamond. A superb Parisian waistcoat of figured satin was then closely laced over her rounded and swelling bust; a jacket of fine broadcloth, decorated with gold naval buttons and a little cap, similarly adorned, completed her costume. The character she was supposed to represent was that of 'the Royal Middy;' and her appearance was singularly captivating in that unique and splendid dress.

Mrs. Franklin, when attired as the Sultana or Oriental Queen, looked truly regal—the rich and glittering Eastern robes well became her voluptuous style of beauty.

The labor of the toilet being completed, the ladies found that it still lacked an hour or so of the time appointed for them to set out; and while they partook of a slight but elegant repast, they amused themselves and beguiled the time by lively and entertaining chat.

'These masquerade balls are delightful affairs; one can enjoy an intrigue with so much safety, beneath the concealing mask,' remarked Mrs. Franklin.