of her thoughts. Her service was engaged to a lady who was neither a Grace Blanche, nor a Rosalind Claremont, but a person whose primordial existence reminded one of the latest fashion-plate. Doubtless she had her moments of aspiration after something higher, if any one was fortunate enough to detect them beneath the apparent heartlessness and shallow perception.s that the most superficial aims and worthless education could develop. How she might excel in dress was her paramount study, and this day had been selected for service in that department that she might avail herself of the great fashion emporium of the previous evening. The nervous exhaustion resulting from the excitement of that night, including some real or fancied slight from one whose flattering attentions she was particularly anxious to gain, made her unusually hard to please; and Amelia, indifferent as she generally was, to praise or the lack of it, began to feel impatient at the total want of appreciation of her best endeavors to give satisfaction.
She was not the one to be pitied, however, for more harrowing sensations, more torturing anxieties, greater restlessness and weariness than she ever knew, tinctured the existence of this votary of fashion and pleasure. No sweet slumber came to her pillow as the blessed reward of wholesome toil, or the consciousness of making a single effort to make others happy. But judge her not harshly. Too many butterflies still flit in our pathway, who, like the transient sunbeams, dazzle with their brightness, but leave no radiance behind to cheer the day of sorrow, or lighten the cares of home. And yet how many instances
