It was not till Christmas that the royal family went out of mourning; but, as soon as it was left off, the court returned to its accustomed gayety balls, concerts, and private theatricals occupying the evenings; though the people remarked with undisguised satisfaction that the expenses of former years had been greatly retrenched.

It is one of the penalties we pay for being joyous, that nobody thinks us capable of care or the victim of trouble until, in some moment of extraordinary expansion, our bubble of gayety bursts.

She trifled daintily with strange food, composing a sentence for her journal: "The whole scene was of a gayety hitherto unparalleled in the annals of our little town.