It had been a brilliant season in the fashionable world that year. Saratoga and Newport were perfect hot-beds of gaiety, splendor and trivial ambition. A thorough bred nobleman or two from England—a German countess—the greatest and most popular statesmen of our own land, had flung a dazzling splendor over these places. But even amid all this false life and Éclat there was one person whose dress, wit and beauty became the theme of general comment. She had taken rooms at Saratoga late in the season. Accommodations for half a dozen servants—stabling for almost as many horses, all was in preparation long before the lady herself appeared.

There was something about this to puzzle and bewilder the most thorough-bred gossip of a watering-place. The servants were foreign, and thoroughly educated to their vocation. When questioned regarding their mistress, they spoke of her without apparent restraint, and always as my lady. But there was no title attached to the name under which the superb suite of apartments had been engaged. Mrs. Gordon! Nothing could be more simple and unpretending. If there was a title behind it, as the indiscretion of the servants seemed to intimate, she was only the more interesting.

Mrs. Gordon's servants had lounged about the United States a whole fortnight; her horses had been exercised by the grooms often enough to attract attention to their superb beauty, and to keep the spirit of gossip and curiosity alive. A lady's maid had for days been making a sensation at the servant's table by her broken English and Parisian finery. Yet no one had obtained a sight of the lady. At last she appeared in the drawing-room, very simply dressed, quiet and self-reliant, neither courting attention nor seeming in the least desirous of avoiding it. She presented no letters, sought no introductions. The various fashionable cliques, with their reigning queens, seemed scarcely to attract the notice of this singular woman, though a mischievous smile would sometimes dawn upon her beautiful mouth, as some petty manoeuvering for superiority passed before her.

A creature so calm, so tranquil, so quietly regardless of contending cliques and fashionable factions, was certain to become an object of peculiar attention, even though rare personal beauty, and all the appliances of great wealth had been wanting. The reputation of a title, the graceful repose of manners just enough tinged with foreign grace to be piquant, and, above all, the novelty of a face and position singularly unlike anything known at the Springs that season, could not fail to excite a sensation.

If the lady had designed to secure for herself with one graceful fling a place among the Élite of American fashion, she could not have managed more adroitly. But even the design was doubtful; she scarcely seemed conscious of the position after it had been awarded to her, and accepted it with a sort of graceful scorn at last, as if yielding herself to the caprice of others, not to her own wishes.

In less than three weeks after her domestication at the Springs, this stranger, announced without introduction, and with no seeming effort, became the reigning belle and toast of the higher circles. Her dress was copied—her wit quoted—her manners became a model to aspiring young ladies, and, with all her power, she was the most popular creature in the world, for she was affable to all, and peculiarly gentle and unassuming to those whom other fashionable leaders were ready to crush with a look and wither by a frown. Sometimes a dash of haughty contempt was visible in her manner, but this was only when thrown in contact with assumption and innate coarseness, which soon shrunk from her keen wit and smiling sarcasms. She was feared by the few, but loved, nay, almost worshipped, by the many.

When the season broke up and the waves of high life ebbed back to the cities, this woman had attained a firm social position, unassailable even by the most envious and the most daring. Still she was as completely unknown as on the first day of her appearance. Of herself she never spoke, and from the strange serving-man, who, maintaining the most profound respect, always hovered about her, nothing but vague hints could be obtained. These hints, apparently won from a simple and hesitating nature, always served to inflame rather than satisfy curiosity. One thing was certain. The lady had seen much of foreign life—had travelled in every penetrable country, and her wealth seemed as great as her beauty. More than this no one knew; and this very ignorance, strange as it may seem, added strength to her position.

The way in which Mrs. Gordon shrouded herself had its own fascination. True, it might conceal low birth, even shame, but it had pleased the fashionable world to bury a high European title under all this mystery, and this belief the lady neither aided nor contradicted, for she seemed profoundly unconscious of its existence. With no human being had she become so intimate that a question on the subject might be directly hazarded. With all her graceful kindliness, there was some thing about her that forbade intrusion or scrutiny. She came to Saratoga beautiful, wealthy, unknown. She left it a brilliant enigma, only the more brilliant that she continued to be mysterious, though a title still loomed mistily in the public mind.

This mysteriousness was rather increased in its effect, and her position wholly established at the annual fancy ball given the last week of her stay at the springs.

During the whole of that season the United States Hotel had been kept in a state of delightful commotion by the rivalry of two leaders in the fashionable world, who had taken up their head-quarters in that noble establishment.

Never was a warfare carried on with such amiable bitterness, such caressing home-thrusts. Everything was done regally, and with that sublime politeness which duellists practice when most determined to exterminate each other. Of course, each lady had her position and her followers, and no military chieftains ever managed their respective forces more adroitly.

Mrs. Nash was certainly the oldest incumbent, and had a sort of preËmption right as a fashionable leader. She had won her place exactly as her husband had obtained his wealth, first plodding his way from the work-shop to the counting-room, thence into the stock market, where, by two or three dashing speculations worthy of the gambling-table, and entered upon in the same spirit, he became a millionaire.

Exactly by the same method Mrs. Nash worked her way upward as a leader of ton. Originally uneducated and assuming, she had exercised unbounded sway over her husband's work-people, patronizing their wives, and practising diligently the airs that were to be transferred with her husband's advancement into higher circles.

Through the rapid gradations of her husband's fortune, she held her own in the race, and grew important, dressy, and presuming, but not a whit better informed or more refined. When her husband became a millionaire, she made one audacious leap into the midst of the upper ten thousand, hustled her way upward, and facing suddenly about, proclaimed herself a leader in the fashionable world.

People looked on complacently. Some smiled in derision; some sneered with scorn; others, too indolent or gentle for dispute, quietly admitted her charms; while to that portion of society worth knowing, she retained her original character—that of a vulgar, fussy, ignorant woman, from whom persons of refinement shrunk instinctively. Thus, through the forbearance of some, the sneers of others, and the carelessness of all, she fought her way to a position which soon became legitimate and acknowledged.

But this year Mrs. Nash met with a very formidable rival, who disputed the ground she had usurped inch by inch. If Mrs. Nash was insolent, Mrs. Sykes was sly and fascinating. With tact that was more than a match for any amount of arrogant presumption, and education which gave keenness to art, founded upon the same hard purpose and coarse-grained character that distinguished Mrs. Nash, she was well calculated to make a contest for fashionable superiority, exciting and piquant.

Women of true refinement never enter into these miserable rivalries for notoriety, but they sometimes look on amused. In this case the ladies were beautifully matched. The audacity of one was met with the artful sweetness of the other. If Mrs. Nash had power and the prestige of established authority, Mrs. Sykes opposed novelty, unmatched art, and a species of serpent-like fascination difficult to cope with; and much to her astonishment, the former lady found her laurels dropping away leaf by leaf before she began to feel them wither.

Always on the alert for partisans, both these ladies had looked upon Mrs. Gordon with calculating eyes. Beautiful, undoubtedly wealthy, and with that slight foreign air—above all, with a title dropping now and then unconsciously from the lips of her servants—she promised to be an auxiliary of immense value to either faction.

For a week or two they hovered about her, much as two cautious trouts might coquette with a fly on the surface of a mountain pool. Both were afraid to dart at the fly, and yet each was vigilant to keep the other from securing the precious morsel.

Thus, while they were manoeuvering around her, drawing public attention that way, Mrs. Gordon became an object of very general admiration, and bade fair, without an effort, and wholly against her will, to rival both the combatants, and like the dancing horse of a Russian chariot, to carry away all the admiration, while the other two bore the toil and burden of the road.

But a few days before the fancy ball, a new fly was cast into the fashionable current, that quite eclipsed anything that had appeared before. An English earl, fresh from the continent, came up to Saratoga, one day, in a train from New York, and would be present at the fancy ball.

Here was new cause for strife between the Nashes and the Sykeses. Which of these ladies should secure the nobleman for the fancy ball? True, the earl was very young, awkward as the school-boy he was, and really looked more like a juvenile horse-jockey than a civilized gentleman. But he was an earl; would assuredly have a seat in the House of Lords, if ever he became old enough; besides, he had already lost thirty thousand dollars at the gaming-table, and bore it like a prince.

Here was an object worth contending for. What American lady would be immortalized by leaning upon the arm of an earl as she entered the assembly room? No minor claims could be put in here. The earl undoubtedly belonged to Mrs. Nash or Mrs. Sykes—which should it be? This was the question that agitated all fashionable life at the Springs to its centre. Partisans were brought into active operation. Private ambassadors went and came from the gambling saloons to the drawing-rooms, looking more portentous than any messenger ever sent from the allied powers to the Czar.

The innocent young lord, who had escaped from his tutor for a lark at the Springs, was terribly embarrassed by so many attentions. Too young for any knowledge of society in his own land, he made desperate efforts to appear a man of the world, and feel himself at home in a country where men are set aside, while society is converted into a paradise for boys. It is rumored that some professional gentlemen took advantage of this confusion in the young lordling's ideas, and his losses at the gambling-table grew more and more princely.

But the important night arrived. The mysterious operations of many a private dressing-room became visible. A hundred bright and fantastic forms trod their way to music along the open colonnade of the hotel toward the assembly-room. The brilliant procession entered the folding-doors, and swept down the room two rivers of human life, flowing on, whirling and retiring, beneath a shower of radiance cast from the wall, and the chandeliers that seemed literally raining light. In her toilet, the American lady is not a shade behind our neighbors of Paris; and no saloon in the world ever surpassed this in picturesque effect and richness of costume. Diamonds were plentiful as dew-drops on a rose thicket. Pearls embedded in lace that Queen Elizabeth would have monopolised for her own toilet, gleamed and fluttered around those republican fairies, a decided contrast to the checked handkerchief that Ben. Franklin used at the European court, or the bare feet with which our revolutionary fathers trod the way to our freedom through the winter snows. After the gay crowd had circulated around the room awhile, there was a pause in the music, a breaking up of the characters into groups; then glances were cast toward the door, and murmurs ran from lip to lip. Neither Mrs. Nash or her rival had yet appeared; as usual their entrance was arranged to make a sensation. How Dodsworth's leader knew the exact time of this fashionable's advent, I do not pretend to say. Certain it is, just as the band struck up an exhilarating march, Mrs. Z. Nash entered the room with erect front and pompous triumph, holding the English earl resolutely by the arm. Mrs. Theodore Sykes came in a good deal subdued and crestfallen, after the dancing commenced. She was escorted by one of the most illustrious of our American statesmen, which somewhat diminished the bitterness of her defeat. Her fancy dress was one blaze of diamonds, and when Mrs. Nash sailed by, holding the young earl triumphantly by the arm, she seemed oblivious of the noble presence, but was smiling up into the eyes of her august companion, as if an American statesman really were some small consolation for the loss of a schoolboy nobleman, who looked as if he would give his right arm, which however, belonged to Mrs. Nash just then, to be safe at home, even with his tutor. When Mrs. Gordon entered the room, no one could have told. When first observed, she was sitting at an open window which looked into the public grounds. The light was striking aslant the white folds of a brocaded silk, and on the delicate marabout feathers in her hair, with the brilliancy of sunshine, playing upon wreaths of newly fallen snow. She evidently had no desire to enter into the spirited competition going on between the rival factions. When a crowd of admirers gathered around the window, she received them quietly, but without empressment. At length, as if weary with talking, she took the first arm offered, and sauntered into the crowd, searching it with her eyes, as if she feared or expected some one. The first dance had broken up; all was gay confusion, when unwittingly she came face to face with Mrs. Nash, who was sailing down the room with her captive. The young earl, who had remained awkwardly shy since his entrance, gave a start of recognition, his sullen features lighted up, and freeing his arm from the grasp of Mrs. Nash, with an unceremonious "Excuse me, Madam!" he advanced with both hands extended.

"My dear, dear lady, I am so glad to see you!"

The lady reached out her hand, smiling and cordial. "You, here?" she answered, shaking her head, "and alone, ah truant!"

"It wasn't my fault; I was deluded off—kidnapped—but by the best fellow in the world; I will tell you all about it." With a hurried bow to the party he was about to leave. The youth placed himself in a position to converse with Mrs. Gordon, as she passed with her previous escort, quite unconscious of her triumph, or of the rage it had occasioned. The lady bent her head with matronly grace, and resumed her walk. "And so you have run away from the good tutor?" she said.

"Run away? oh, nothing of the sort; he consented to let me come. Leicester can do anything with him. A deuced clever fellow, that Leicester; you know him of course! Everybody knows Leicester, I believe. Ha, what is the matter? Did I tread on your dress?"

"No no! you were saying something of—"

"Yes, yes, of Leicester—a wonderful fellow—we have only known him a week or two, and he can do anything with my tutor—got me off up here like magic!"

"And do you like him?"

"Well, now, you'll confess it's rather hard to like a man who has won ten thousand dollars from you, in one night; but I do rather fancy him, in spite of it."

"Has he won this money from you?" inquired the lady, in a low voice—"you, a minor!"

"Entre nous, yes; but it was all above-board, and in the most gentlemanly manner."

"Is Mr. Leicester at the hotel? Has he ever presented himself in the drawing-room?"

"No; he thinks the ladies a bore. I thought so myself, ten minutes ago; but now, with an old friend, it is different. The sight of you brought me back to Florence. You were kind to me there: I shall never, never forget the days and nights of that terrible fever; but for you, I must have died."

"I was used to sickness, you know," answered the lady, in a faltering voice.

"I remember," answered the earl, "that lovely girl—your relative, I believe—did she recover in Florence?"

"She died there," was the low reply.

"As I might have done, but for you," he answered, with feeling. "It was the first idea I ever had of a mother's kindness."

"And do you really feel this little service so much?"

"I only wish it were in my power to prove how much!"

"You can, easily."

"How, lady?"

"Return to your tutor in the morning—break off all acquaintance with this gentleman."

"What—Leicester?"

"Yes, Leicester."

"That is easy; he left for New York this evening, and I go forward to Canada. Is there nothing more difficult by which I can prove my gratitude?"

"Yes; tell me all that has passed between you and this Mr. Leicester, but not here—let us walk down into the drawing-room."

A few moments after, Mrs. Sykes drew softly up to Mrs. Nash, with one of her sweetest smiles: "His lordship, after all, glides back to his own countrywomen; we Americans stand no chance," she said.

Mrs. Nash bit her lip, and gave the folds of her gold-colored moire a backward sweep with her hand.

"I fancy the earl is not anxious to extend his attention beyond its present limit; I always said she was worth knowing. Mrs. Gordon seems an old acquaintance. We may, perhaps, now find out who she really is; I will ask him in the morning."

"Do!" cried half a dozen voices—"we always thought her somebody, but really, she quite patronises the earl himself: do ask all about her, when his lordship comes back."

It was a vain request—the young earl had left the ball-room for good; and long before the persons grouped around Mrs. Nash had left their beds in the morning, he was passing up Lake Champlain, sleepily regarding the scenery along its shore.

That same morning, Mrs. Gordon left Saratoga, so early that no one witnessed her departure. But two or three young men, who had finished up their fancy ball in the open air, reported that she was seen at daybreak, on the colonnade, talking very earnestly to her tall, awkward serving-man, for more than half an hour.

Mrs. Gordon—for thus the lady continued to be known—came to New York early in the autumn, and in the great emporium began a new phase of her erratic and brilliant life.

A mansion, in the upper part of the city, had been in the course of erection during the previous year. It was a castellated villa in the very suburbs, standing upon the gentle swell of a hill, and commanding a fine view both of the city, and the beautiful scenery that lies upon the North and East Rivers.

A few ancient trees, rooted when New York was almost a distant city, stood around this dwelling, sheltering with their old and leafy branches the glowing flowers and rare shrubbery with which grounds of considerable extent were crowded.

This dwelling, so graceful in its architecture, so fairy-like in its grounds, had risen as if by magic among those old trees. Lavish was the cost bestowed upon it; rich and faultless was the furniture that arrived from day to day after the masons and artists had completed their work. Statues of Parian marble, rich bronzes, antique carvings in wood, and the most sumptuous upholstery were arranged by the architect who had superintended the building, and who acted under directions from some person abroad.

When all was arranged, drawing-rooms, library, ladies' boudoir and sleeping chambers, that might have sheltered the repose of an Eastern princess, the house was closed. Those who passed it could now and then catch a glimpse of rich fresco paintings, upon the walls, through a half-fastened shutter; and through the hot-house windows might be seen a little world of exotic plants, dropping their rich blossoms to waste; while the walls beyond were laden with fruit ripening in the artificial atmosphere. Grapes and nectarines fell from bough and vine, untasted, or only to be gathered stealthily by the old man who had temporary charge of the grounds.

Thus everything remained close and silent, like some enchanted palace of fairy land, week after week, till the autumn came on. Since the architect left it, no person save the old gardener, had ever been observed to enter even the delicate iron railing that encompassed the grounds. True, the neighbors, to whom this dwelling had become an object of great interest, were heard to assert that at a time, early in the summer, lights had been observed one stormy night, in the second-story, and even high up in the principal tower. Some even persisted that before it was quite dark, a close carriage had been driven up to the door and away again, leaving two or three persons, who certainly entered the house. After that, carriage wheels had more than once been heard above the storm, rolling to and fro, as if people were coming and going all night.

The next morning, when all the neighborhood was alive with curiosity, this dwelling stood as before—stately and silent, amid the old forest trees. The shutters were closed; the gate locked. Not a trace could be found proving that any human being had entered the premises. So the whole story was generally set down as an Irish fiction, though the servant girl, who originated it, persisted stoutly that she had not only seen lights and heard the wheels, but had caught glimpses of a cashmere shawl within the door; and of a little barefooted girl, with a basket on her arm, coming out half an hour after, and alone. But there stood the closed and silent house—and there was the talkative old gardener in contradiction of this marvellous tale. Besides, carriages were always going up and down the avenue upon which the dwelling stood, and out of this the girl had probably found material for her fiction. Certain it was, that from this time till October no being was seen to enter the silent palace.

Then, in the first golden flush of autumn, the house was flung open. Carriages came to and fro almost every hour. Saddle horses, light phÆtons, and an equipage yet more stately, drove in and out of the stables. The windows, with all their wealth of gorgeously tinted glass, were open to the hazy atmosphere; grooms hung around the stables; footmen glided over the tesselated marble of the entrance-hall.

Conspicuous among the rest, was one tall, awkwardly-shaped man, who came and went apparently at pleasure. His duties seemed difficult to define, even by the curious neighbors. Sometimes he drove the carriage, but never unless the lady of the mansion rode in it. Sometimes he opened the door. Again he might be seen in the conservatory, grouping flowers with the taste and delicacy of a professed artist; or in the hot-houses, gathering fruit and arranging it in rich masses for the table. It was marvellous to see the beautiful effect produced by those great, awkward hands. The very japonicas and red roses seemed to have become more glowing and delicate beneath his touch. But after the first week this man almost wholly disappeared from the dwelling. Sometimes he might be seen stealing gently in at nightfall, or very early in the morning; but his active superintendence was over; he seemed to be no longer an inmate, but one who came to the place occasionally to inquire after old friends.

But the mistress of all this splendor—the beautiful woman who sometimes came smilingly forth to enter her carriage, who sauntered now and then into the conservatory, blooming as the flowers that surrounded her, mature in her loveliness as the fruit that hung upon the walls bathed in the golden sunshine—who was this woman, with her unparalleled attractions, her almost fabulous wealth? The world asked this question without an answer, for the Mrs. Gordon of Saratoga, and the Ada Leicester of our story, satisfied no curiosity regarding her personal history. She visited no one who did not first seek her companionship, and thus deprived society of its right to question her.

We, who know this woman by her right name, and in her true character—that of a disappointed, erring, but still affectionate being—might wonder at her bloom, her smiling cheerfulness, her easy and gentle repose of look and manner; but human nature is full of such contradictions, teeming with serpents, absolutely hidden and bathed in the perfume of flowers.

If Ada Leicester smiled, she was not the less sad at heart. If her manners were easy and her voice sweet, it was habit—the necessity of pleasing others—that had rendered these things a second nature to her. With one great, and, we may add, almost holy object at heart, she pursued it earnestly, while all the routine of life went on as if she had no thought but for the world, and no pleasure or aim beyond the luxurious life which seemed to render her existence one continued gleam of Paradise.

Hitherto we have seen this woman in the agony of perverted love—perverted, though legal, for its object was vile; and worship of a base thing is hideous according to its power. We have seen her bowed down with grief, grovelling to the very soil of her native valley, in passionate agony. But these were phases in her life, and extremes of character which seldom appeared before the world.

It is a mistake when people fancy that any life can be made up of unmitigated sorrow. Even evil has its excitement and its gleams of wild pleasure, vivid and keen. The sting of conscience is sometimes forgotten; the viper, buried so deeply in flowers that his presence is scarcely felt, till, uncoiling with a fling, he dashes them all aside, withered by his hot breath and spotted with venom. This heart-shock, while it lasts, is terrible; but those who have no strength to cast forth the serpent bury him again in fresh flowers, and lull him to a poisonous sleep in some secret fold of the heart, till he grows restless and fierce once more.

With all her splendor, Ada Leicester was profoundly unhappy. The deep under-current of her heart always welled up bitter waters. Let the surface sparkle as it would, tears were constantly sleeping beneath. There is no agony like that of a heart naturally pure and noble, which circumstance, weakness, or temptation has warped from its integrity. To know yourself possessed of noble powers, to appreciate all the sublimity of goodness, and yet feel that you have undermined your own strength, and cast a veil over the beautiful through which you can never see clearly, this is deep sorrow—this is the darkness and punishment of sin. If we could but know how evil is punished in the heart of the evil-doer, charity would indeed cover a multitude of sins.

Ada Leicester was unhappy—so unhappy that the beggar at her gate might have pitied her. The pomp, the adulation which surrounded her, had become a habit; thus all the zest and novelty of first possession was gone, and these things became necessary, without gratifying the hungry cry of her soul.

At this period of her life she was utterly without objects of attachment; and what desolation is equal to this in a woman's heart? The thwarted affections and warm sympathies of her nature became clamorous for something to love. Her whole being yearned over the blighted affections of other days; maternal love grew strong within her. She absolutely panted to fold the child, abandoned in a delirium of passionate resentment, once more to her bosom. But that child could nowhere be found. Her parents, too—that noble, kind old man, who had loved her so—that meek and loving woman, her mother—had the earth opened and swallowed them up? was she never to see them more?—to what terrible destitution might her sin have driven them.

The time had been when this proud woman shrunk from meeting persons so deeply injured—but oh, how fervently loved! Now she absolutely panted to fling herself at their feet, and crave forgiveness for all the shame and anguish her madness had cast upon them. In all this her exertions had been cruelly thwarted; parents, child, everything that had loved her and suffered for her, seemed swept into oblivion. The past was but a painful remembrance, not a wreck of it remained save in her own mind.

Another feeling more powerful than filial or maternal love—more absorbing—more ruthlessly adhesive, was the love she could not conquer for the man who had been the first cause of all the misery and wrong against which she was struggling. It was the one passion of a life-time—the love of a warm, impulsive heart—of a vivid intellect, and, say what we will, this is a love that never changes—never dies. It may be perverted—it may be wrestled with and cast to the earth for a time; but such love once planted in a woman's bosom, burns there so long as a spark is left to feed its vitality; burns there, it may be, for ever and ever, a blessing or a curse.

To Ada Leicester it was a curse, for it outlived scorn. It crushed her self-respect—it fell like a mildew upon all the good resolutions that, about this time, began to spring up and brighten in her nature. You would not have supposed that proud, beautiful woman so humble in her love—her hopeless love—of a bad man, and that man the husband whom she had wronged! Yet so it was. Notwithstanding the past: notwithstanding all the perfidy and cruel scorn with which he had deliberately urged her on to ruin, she would have given up anything, everything for one expression of affection, such as had won the love of her young heart. But even here, where the accomplishment of her wish would surely have proved a punishment, her affections were flung rudely back.

And now, when all her efforts were in vain, when no one could be found to accept her penitence, or return some little portion of the yearning tenderness that filled her heart, she plunged recklessly into the world again. The arrow was in her side; but she folded her silken robes over it, and strove to feed her great want with the husks of fashionable life; alas, how vainly! To persons of her passionate nature, the very attempt thus to appease the soul's hunger is a mockery. Ada Leicester felt this, and at times she grew faint amid her empty splendor. She had met with none of the usual retributions which are the coarser and more common result of faults like hers. No disgrace clung to her name: she had wealth, beauty, position, homage. But who shall say that the punishment of her sin was not great even then? for there is no pain to some hearts so great as a consciousness of undeserved homage. Still this was but the silver edging to the cloud that had begun to rise and darken over her life. Her own proud, warm heart was doomed to punish itself to the utmost.