"She's ready now," said the footman, as he reappeared. "She wishes to know who will be her first visitor."

     "I think I had better just look in upon her before any of the ladies go," said Colonel Dent.

     "Tell her, Sam, a gentleman is coming."

     Sam went and returned.

     "She says, sir, that she'll have no gentlemen; they need not trouble themselves to come near her; nor," he added, with difficulty suppressing a titter, "any ladies either, except the young, and single."

     "By Jove, she has taste!" exclaimed Henry Lynn.

     Miss Ingram rose solemnly: "I go first," she said, in a tone which might have befitted the leader of a forlorn hope, mounting a breach in the van of his men.

     "Oh, my best! oh, my dearest! pause--reflect!" was her mama's cry; but she swept past her in stately silence, passed through the door which Colonel Dent held open, and we heard her enter the library.