"I will give you one within a few days, that occurs to me at this moment as bearing singularly on that first conversation of ours in the library. Yet it was written months ago. It is a mere allegory."

"Dealing in generalities, then. You keep me standing in the vestibule, while you affect confidence."

"Have I not told you I made no mystery of my petty gift? It is no more, I assure you, and I shall have a very poor opinion of your taste, if you admire anything I have written."

"My vanity condemns me to be censorious in that case. Now that is hard!"

"No, I will not brook censure, nor discussion of any kind; so that if I give you my poem, it is to be a sealed book between us forevermore.”

"To hear is to obey; but you know you reduce me to mere cipherage by such a sentence. You have already pronounced me critical or nothing.”

"Ah! it is better to be nothing than critical sometimes. But I must leave you; I have an engagement with Madame Favrand. She wants to hear me talk, she says —how flattering! That is what purchasers always say about parrots before they buy them, you know.”

"The Major has been describing you, no doubt, in his enthusiastic way. But I will not longer detain you from that enchanting woman."

He withdrew quietly, and a few moments later I found myself near Madame Favrand. I was charmed by the grace and sweetness of her manners, and the chosen beauty of her expressions. Her thoughts did indeed seem pearls, strung on a golden thread. Refinement was visible in every movement, every act, and there was a deprecating sadness in her whole air that affected me very painfully, in addition to what I knew of her ill-starred destiny.

Ill-health had beatified, while it undermined her beauty. Her brow and cheeks were sunken and sallow, but clear as wax; and the blue veins on temples and throat and chin were as distinct as if traced externally. She had the indestructible beauty of feature, however, even in that premature decay, which had dimmed her eye and traced white lines in her smooth, dark hair, and tinged her once exquisite teeth with a faint blueness, like pearls that have been too often washed in fresh water. Patient suffering was traced in every line of her face, in every tone of her low, sweet voice, in every movement of her shadowy hands.

She was the embodiment of gentleness and the guardian angel of her husband, who, but for her restraining influence, would no doubt have plunged into the sea of dissipation.

Even then he was meditating for that tender being a blow as useless as it was cruel. She who was like a flower that one rude shock might crush, and on whose brow approaching doom was written so clearly, that one that ran might read. But so far, his threatened blow was mercifully concealed from her.

It was while we sat together, that Major Favrand, as the result of an hour's scribbling at the centre-table, brought to us the conversational items I have elsewhere recorded, — indeed, nothing but the remonstrances of his wife prevented his handing them about the room for general inspection, so careless was he of consequences.

"It is his way, Miss Harz," she complained; "he caricatures everything. And yet how can one help being amused, wrong as it is to laugh at one's friends and neighbors?" And she glanced at him admiringly.

He took her small, frail hand and pressed it to his lips, bending low to reach it.

All are not like you," he said, "my pearless pearl; you who respect the feelings of the meanest, and step aside to let the worm crawl by securely." "Oh, Victor!" drawing her hand away gently, "what will Miss Harz think of us? Such old married people too. She will laugh at such follies. She cannot keep pace with your impulses, being a stranger."

"Miss Harz is an honest-hearted woman, though she has the good fortune to be young and attractive, and can make allowances for earnest affection even if it has its inconvenient and egotistical tides. The truth is, Celia, I am despondent to-night for all my folly. Cowper wrote 'John Gilpin,' you know, in a fit of the blackest blues."

She shook her head mournfully.

“You must not be thinking of that always, my dear, dear love. The expiation has been so perfect;" I heard her say in her low silvery accents. 'Miss Harz, you cannot think what a tender conscience Victor has. He ought to be a Catholic."

What, with Huguenot blood in my veins, Celia? You dream, my love." He spoke a little sternly, I thought, with averted face.

"Ah! true, true, I had forgotten. I always do about that. But it seems to me a very comforting religion. Don't you think so, Miss Harz?”

"Indeed I do. And yet I would not choose to be a Catholic. I love my liberty too well. I fear I am not very religiously inclined, though I try very hard to love God and do right. But one fails sadly unaided.”

'Yes, truly, without the support of a Higher Power, our own resolutions would most often come to nought. Christ is a pillar of strength to the weak and disconsolate,” and she sighed deeply, smiling the next moment.

All at once Major Favrand started to his feet, throwing aside, as if it were a mantle he dropped behind him by undoing the clasps, the deep gloom that had oppressed him so visibly during the last half hour.

"The charade is commencing, as I live!" he exclaimed, "and I am not ready for my part of the performance. They have rigged it up in the library, I believe. Follow the stream, ladies, if you wish to see me as a 'highpriest of Venus,' my specialty, some say; au revoir;" and kissing the tips of his fingers lightly, and for the nonce forgetting his military carriage, Major Favrand literally bounded away.

"You see how mercurial Victor is, Miss Harz. But let us go; I suppose it will be a pretty sight." And we proceeded together to the theatre of action.

The library, a large room, had been divided by a green baize curtain, and there were seats for a goodly audience. We had not long to wait for the first scene and syllable of the charade, heralded as such by Mr. Gregory, the prompter, disguised in an Oriental costume, as far, at least, as such marked individuality as he possessed could be travestied.

THE FIRST SCENE

represented a group of young girls dressed in the Greek costume, bearing wreaths of myrtle, which each one held high above her head, so as to present it fully to the audience, while they stood linked in a circle significant of the syllable that commenced the words.

MUSIC.

"Oh! where's the slave so lowly."
Curtain falls.

SCENE SECOND.

heralded by Mr. Gregory, or the prompter, as an interlude expressive of what was to follow, not of a syllable at all, yet important to the sense of the charade.

MUSIC.

"I'll watch for thee from my lonely bower.'

A lonely chamber is represented, in which a taper burns low, beside a couch draped in white. A figure of Cupid fills a niche above it, and a girl dressed in the robes of a priestess, and crowned with myrtle and roses, while she holds a nestling dove to her bosom, stands beside it in a graceful attitude, eager, watchful, expectant.

Beautiful indeed, with her long, white, floating drapery and veil, and pale and perfect face, seemed Marion. Suddenly the roaring of the storm is heard without. She starts, approaches the long window (giving on the gallery, be it remembered, but supposed to overlook the ocean), loosens her dove (a tame, white pigeon very glad to escape), then wildly clasping her hands, rushes after it into the outer darkness.

Curtain falls.

SCENE THIRD.

announced by the prompter as "containing three syllables, and all the gist of the performance."

MUSIC.

"Farewell, farewell to thee, Araby's daughter,"

and the song of Ariel, in three voices, slightly altered for the occasion,

"Full fathom five thy lover lies."

SCENE THIRD.

Same apartment; the figure of a young man is seen lying on the white couch surrounded by veiled figures, plunged in grief. A winding-sheet covers his insensible form, revealing alone his head, with his dripping hair, bare feet and arms, the last hanging loosely to the floor. We recognize the delicate and heroic features of Mr. Vernon, who plays the part of "drowned, drowned," to perfection.

Suddenly the priestess returns bearing a cresset in her hand, and shading her eyes as if emerging from storm and darkness. She enters through the window, dishevelled, haggard, agonized-her wreath and veil partly torn away her hair hanging about her shoulders. She approaches the couch wildly, staggers back, drops the lamp she holds (which gives forth a faint perfume in dying, like burning sandal-wood), raises her hands to heaven, then falls forward fainting at the foot of the couch.

MUSIC.

Curtain falls.

"The dead march in Saul."

SCENE FOURTH [THE END].

A solemn procession of veiled virgins, bearing a bier, covered with white and preceded by the High-Priest of Venus (whom we recognize at a glance. as Major Favrand), bearing an oleander branch, which he waves solemnly above the dead. He then pauses and in most expressive pantomime explains to the spectators the manner in which the youthful couple met their fate,——-the one by the overwhelming billows, the other by leaping into the sea from her tower. After which, again flourishing his branch, he signifies the word,

OLEANDER.

Here ends the account of the New Year's festivities at Beauseincourt. Here also endeth our farce, and now beginneth our tragedy.

M

ELIZA ANN DUPUY.

ISS DUPUY, one of the pioneer authors of the South, and perhaps

one of the most widely known, is the descendant of that Colonel Dupuy who led the band of Huguenot exiles to the banks of James river. Colonel Dupuy's grave is still exhibited in the old church whose ruins consecrate the ancient site of Jamestown. Her maternal grandfather was Captain Joel Sturdevant, who raised a company at his own expense, and fought gallantly throughout the war of the Revolution. Miss Dupuy is also related by blood to the Watkins family of Virginia. She is thus by birth related to the best and oldest families in the "Old Dominion" a fact she has never forgotten, but has kept carefully her escutcheon clean in all the vicissitudes of a varied life. One of her best novels is founded on the story of "The Huguenot Exiles;" many of the incidents therein are drawn from family tradition. Miss Dupuy was born in Petersburg, Va. After the death of her father, her family experienced heavy reverses of fortune, and this girl, then a handsome, stately, dark-haired maiden, with a spirit worthy of her lineage, stepped boldly forward to aid in the support of her younger brother and sister. She was competent to teach. She became a governess in the family of Mr. Thomas G. Ellis, of Natchez, where she had charge of the education of his daughter, now known as the author of several books, publishing under the name of "Filia.” Miss Dupuy found a pleasant home here, where she was thrown continually into the society of such women as Eleanor and Catherine Ware, and such men as S. S. Prentiss, John Ross, Boyd, and Bingaman. Natchez at that time boasted a brilliant circle of wit and intellect, and the handsome young governess, with her dignified reserve and noble pride, was one of its ornaments. Miss Dupuy began to write very early. While at Natchez she wrote the "Conspirator," and read it aloud to her little circle of friends and admirers. Eleanor Ware and she used to have grand literary symposiums, where they would read their productions to each other and to gentle Mrs. Ellis, who