The House of a Merchant Prince

VIII.

A FLAW IN A CORNER-STONE.

THE merchant prince had alighted from his buggy, on his way down town, every few mornings, during the building of his mansion, and become a familiar figure in the neighborhood. He had peered into corners, turned over bits of loose material with his boot, and put sharp questions to his workmen, lifting his hand to his ear, in his awe-inspiring way, to catch their replies.

When all was complete he paid off those engaged, having first beaten them down to the lowest point, and they departed in such contentment as they might. In the general harmony there was one exception. The stone-mason, Jocelyn, had grumbled for some time, claiming to have taken his contract too cheap, and to be carrying it out at a loss to himself. There was no relief for this, however, and he was obliged to acquiesce in the brusque opinion of Rodman Harvey, that it was altogether his own affair and he should have kept a sharper lookout.

But now, at the last moment, an offset of some hundreds of dollars besides was retained from him, on the plea of a piece of defective stone-work. This, which he thought might have been spared him in consideration of the extent to which he had already suffered, was the straw that finally ruined his temper. He went away in a rage, swearing never to do another stroke of work for so hard a task-master. He obtained such poor satisfaction as he might from retailing everything he could learn to the disadvantage of Rodman Harvey, not disdaining even the scurrilous stories of the shanty tenants, which he had had occasion to hear while engaged in building the houses in Harvey’s Terrace. He spread the stories broadcast, among other places, at the Nassau Street restaurant, where he lunched when transacting business with his bank down town.

Jocelyn, in his irritation, denied the plainest evidence of the senses. There was, in fact, a defect of a very singular character, and it was in the corner-stone itself. There began to appear a scaling of the surface, — a weakness to which the red sandstone of New York is subject, but only as a rule after years and hard usage by the elements. This scaling continued, till one day a lamina as thick as a clap-board detached itself, and, being broken off, disclosed one of those curious fossil bird or reptile tracks found in the Connecticut River formation, from the quarries of which the stone was derived.

“ Anything connected with birds, you know, is dreadful,” Mrs. Rodman Harvey declared, professing a superstitious awe at the occurrence, as if it were a kind of harpy clutch of destiny upon the house. “ If a bird flies in at your window, now, —nothing could be worse. I have known so many instances. This must be rectified at any price.”

But Dr. Wyburd, being brought, held learnedly that it was not certainly the foot-print of a bird, but as likely that of the Otozoöon Moodii, a reptile of the Labyrinthodont order, of the Triassic period, which often attained to a height of twelve feet.

Selkirk approved of it, from a virtuoso’s point of view. Angelica fancied it more like a hand than a claw, and was pleased to find in it a certain resemblance to the Muff’et crest (their branch of the Harveys having none to which they could legitimately lay claim to use on their note-paper and carriage panel), as if it were a testimony to their natural distinction come down from the Mesozoic age. The block was therefore neatly surfaced again, and the singular imprint allowed to remain. Only, as it began to attract much.remark from passers-by, a magnolia shrub was set out before it.

After Harvey had finished his series of visits to the house, he was followed by his wife and daughter, who took the matter of the decorating and furnishing particularly into their own hands. It is fair to say, however, that Miss Angelica devoted her chief attention to the apartments allotted to herself. She succeeded in getting her sitting-room done to her satisfaction, in pear-wood and a nebulous drab plush ; and her bedroom in flowered silk chintz, of a charming pink effect, and gold.

Mrs. Rodman Harvey summoned this popular arranger of interiors, then that. She gave a room to each, and then got one to going over the work of the other, and embroiled herself more or less with all. She was aided by the suggestions of Aureolin Slab, who, though pained to the heart by the exterior of the house, deemed it his duty to save it to what extent he could from similar vandalism within. Then came the dealers in the smaller objects of art, who filled the rooms as full as they could hold with their elegant wares. The result was a magnificence that the inexperienced in New York houses could never have inferred from without. The whole was finished with such expedition as to be ready for occupation by the family before the beginning of the wateringplace season.

There was time for a notable entertainment which took the form of a reception to the President of the United States. Rodman Harvey considered that a sumptuous house-warming, to which the world should be invited on a liberal scale, could be made an effective means for the increase of his popularity. It happened also that the President was to be in town at the date, for the dedication of some new public monument, and would accept his invitation.

If Mrs. Rodman Harvey had cares beyond the ken of most mortals even at ordinary times, it may be conceived that they were not diminished now. Her husband suggested again, as he had once before suggested, the experiment of taking Ottilie, or some such person, to write her letters for her, and otherwise assist in lightening her burdens.

“ Oh, you cannot do that with relations,” objected Angelica, overhearing. “ There are their dreadful feelings to be considered. They always expect to be treated as equals.”

The idea apparently did not meet with Mrs. Harvey’s favor, perhaps because it was not her own at first. She was led, nevertheless, to include her niece in the long list of guests for the “ reception,” and to send for her to come down the Saturday before — the entertainment being set for the evening of Tuesday — to make her acquaintance. Should it stop there, it would be an easy way, at any rate, to discharge any obligation the girl might fancy them to be under to her on the score of kinship.

Ottilie’s invitation came late, and she was asked to reply by telegraph, and to start immediately. Could she have had the option of a letter she might have framed excuses ; but any refusal by telegraph must be curt and ungracious. She had had repeated directions from her mother, that it was her Christian duty, to herself and her family, to receive in an affable spirit any overtures that might come from this influential source. She remembered the arguments of Bainbridge, and the real Gérôme she had seen purchased. The Hasbroucks themselves, who surprised her meditating over the invitation, urged her to go by all means. The opportunity to meet the President was what nobody should think of neglecting. She set out, therefore, and the feud in the family was to this extent healed. She well knew privately what she would do for the Hasbroucks, could she gain the confidence of her uncle, and a favorable occasion ever offered.

Her uncle’s house was a near realization to her of the rich properties of her histories and romances. “ The bedstead in my aunt Alida’s room,” she wrote home, ministering to an eager curiosity that would naturally be entertained there, “ is of carved teak-wood, with a canopy of velvet and lace, and stands upon a platform. I am told by her French maid, Rosine, that it cost six thousand dollars. All the toilet articles in my cousin Angelica’s chamber are of ivory and silver,” etc., etc., etc.

There was a fire-place in the wide entrance hall, with vases and plates of Italian majolica above it, a rich rug before it, and on each side another vase of Japanese cloisonné, taller than Ottilie’s head. A porphyry bowl, on a pedestal of old Japanese bronze, like a baptismal font, received the cards of visitors.

She climbed a staircase so broad and easy that climbing was hardly an effort. It had lamps alternately of silver and porcelain, held up by bronze statues, on its posts, and vases and tropical plants on its wide platforms. The approach to the picture-gallery — where her Géróme, and plenty of other masters that pleased her better, were now to be gazed at to her heart’s content — was past a Musidora and a Samson in marble, and up either of two short flights of marble steps, with a marble balustrade between.

The principal drawing-room, upholstered in silks and plushes of sulphur yellow, was of the lightly severe yet elegant Louis XVI. style, and had a small gallery projecting from one side for musicians. A lesser, rose-colored drawing-room was fantastic with the profuse gilded scroll-works of the Rococo Louis XV.

It was her cousin Selkirk who interested himself to go about with her and affix the correct titles to the puzzling variety of styles she saw. The gravely rich Henri II. library was hung with old tapestries. The dining-room had tapestry chairs and dark Italian cabinets, so rich with carving that no vacant space of the original wood was seen. Besides the books in the library, there were found, in low ebony cases, in a small receptionroom off the hall, a series of choice volumes, bound uniformly in white vellum.

There were embroidered and wrought portières, crystal chandeliers containing waxen tapers, porcelain lamps, their light softened by colored silk shades, floors of polished wood and tessellated marble, tables covered with velvet bordered with Venetian point lace ; there were blue china, screens, clocks, musical boxes, statuettes, objects of ivory, pearl, ormolu, buhl, and Limoges enamel, — one revel of glowing color and luxury unstinted by expense.

Ottilie was impressed too by her cousin Angelica, whom she first saw leaning against the back of a fauteuil, in a graceful pose, in one of the rich parlors. She bowed down in ingenuous reverence before her accomplishments, her costly education, her travels, her reception at foreign courts. So many advantages, and so brilliant and high bred an aspect could hardly consist, it seemed to her, with any but the most dignified and worthy character as well.

She did not understand how her aunt need really be so agitated by the management of her servants, and the rest. She had thought that one of the first uses of wealth was to purchase immunity from the more vulgar cares. This good lady took her on her tours of inspection about the house, bustling now with preparations for the festival, and made her a sharer in many confidences. She found here a jewel and there a scarf or a ribbon for the young girl’s adornment, and forced it upon her with an open-handed generosity.

“ There are times,” she said, “ when it seems as if I must put on my bonnet, and, leaving all, fly to the uttermost ends of the earth, in search of but one moment of blessed, blessed peace. Here are fourteen mortal servants, and the last thought of all of them is to do what they were engaged for, and their first to persecute me.”

The tasks of the bond-slaves of Egypt, the sufferings in Dante’s Inferno, were but a bagatelle, as Mrs. Harvey represented it, to her own. Yet it was strange that she retained her plump comeliness, and, though so often threatening, had never yet put on her bonnet for any more desperate purpose than to go out in it conformably to the usages of polite society.

Ottilie did not reconcile herself at first to the full-grown men in livery. They seemed clumsy and out of place in the house. She would have preferred, with her simpler tastes, only neat, trim maid - servants. The English butler, William Skiff, with his baldness and false teeth, was as imposing as a bishop. Alphonse, the waiter and footman, had a grenadier aspect, and should have presented arms to you — if he had, that would have been something worth while — whenever he opened the door. They had brought him back with them from their last tour in Europe. Angelica thought of having him go out behind her when she rode on horseback, instead of John Welsh, from the stables.

She had a cultivated taste in servants. She declared the most simply horrible thing in the world to be a waiter with a moustache (instead of the conventional side whiskers and shaven lip), — a view which did not strike Ottilie as quite of the expected profundity from such a source.

One evening there came in from the vicinity, to play billiards with the merchant prince, in his sumptuous new saloon, his friends Hackley and Hastings.

With Hastings was his wife, who was young and pretty. She tripped up-stairs to the boudoir of Mrs. Harvey, with whom she was a favorite, for a confidential chat, while their husbands were knocking about the billiard balls below. Ottilie was presented to her. Quite a friendship sprung up between them, on the basis of two pretty children, whom the young girl admired, and whom she was accorded the privilege of seeing put to bed on Sunday evening. It ended in her being given practically into the charge of Mrs. Hastings, for the entertainment. Her aunt and cousin were to “ receive,” and would have their hands extremely full. She was simply to be a minor guest among the great number invited, an arrangement that suited her wishes exactly.

IX.

“ TO MEET THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.”

The list of invitations, “ To meet the President of the United States,” as the inscription following the other details on the impressive square of pasteboard ran, was sufficiently large to include Bainbridge also. The young man considered it respectful to appear at the levee of a patron, who might be a more valuable patron yet, and had a certain curiosity, besides, about the new chief magistrate of his country, then lately installed into office.

He paid a call or two, dropped in at a regular weekly reception of the same night, all places where he was much overdue, and arrived at Rodman Harvey’s at about eleven o’clock. A fine drizzle of rain was falling. The semiopaque roof of the picture-gallery, aglow, and illumining a little the humid atmosphere above, betokened, at a distance, the festivity in progress within. A striped canvas awning was stretched across the sidewalk, just as similar awnings were out on such a night at the group of fashionable restaurants below. At the awning’s mouth a few spectators, kept in check by a policeman, lingered patiently under umbrellas, to watch the fortunate guests alight. The elegant men got down, with the collars of their great-coats turned up and silk mufflers about their throats. Wonderful creatures, with voluminous draperies of white, pink, pale blue, and saffron gathered close about them, followed, bending double, and alighting upon the carpeted stones with dainty rebounds. The carriages were ranged in interminable files on either side of the street, their wet varnish glistening in the gas-light. The gas-lights themselves and figures that passed were reflected in a mysterious way in the wet sidewalks, as if from black streams of fathomless depth, the surface of which was somehow curiously solidified.

The gloom without gave the more effect to the brightness within. Two orchestras were playing : one in the music-gallery of the principal drawingroom ; the other in a spacious temporary apartment formed, for the greater convenience of the dancers, by flooring and roofing over the yard at the rear of the mansion. The banisters of the grand staircase were entwined with smilax and roses. A deep cornice and wainscot belt, made up of white flowers, starred with others in color, extended around the walls in the small drawingroom, and over the spot where the President stood, with the hostess and her daughter beside him, hung a mammoth ball of violets. No expense was spared, as the saying is. Some confreres of the merchant prince, of a practical turn, brushing up their elderly whiskers before the mirror in their dressing-room above stairs, endeavored incidentally to compute it. There were those who said that Harvey was not doing all this without an object, either. He had his designs upon the distinguished guest of the evening. He hoped to obtain from him the office of secretary of the treasury, for which he had already intrigued. This was chiefly, too, what his political activity meant. He considered a seat in Congress, from the foremost district of New York, merely as a steppingstone, since no doubt his not having taken part in national affairs before had been construed against him. The health of the present secretary was not good, and, in case of the appointment of a successor, it was eminently proper that he should be chosen, for once, from the great commercial metropolis of the country. Who more suitable, in that event, — so they deemed the merchant prince to argue,—with his large experience in trade and finance, than Hodman Harvey ? “ He knew the President of old, it seems ; through having employed him in some railroad case at the West. I do not say that Harvey would he my choice,” said one speaker, “ but stranger things have happened than that he may get the place yet.”

“ I see that Burlington is here,” commented another. “ He and the President were generals in the war together, and I suppose he has laid aside his difference with Harvey for the time being, to come and pay las respects,— as is quite right. He is a level-headed person, Burlington.”

These elderly gossips were not above comments also on points of feminine beauty, and on the current social scandals. They retailed the latest Huyskamp escapades, among others. A granddaughter of the connection had run away with an adventurer, whom she had been in the habit of meeting at the Park, instead of going to Madame Bellefontaine’s school, for which she had started with her books regularly every morning. The second Mrs. Huyskamp, Mrs. John, a rather mature person, — apropos of whose appearance, going down the stairs, while they waited for their own spouses to emerge from the dressing-room, these doings were treated of, — had been seen coming out of one of the cemeteries, with her head on young Northfleet’s shoulder. “That last I deny in toto” said Watervliet, availing himself of the opportunity to repeat a witticism which had met with considerable success at the club. “ It stands to reason. You cannot have old heads on young shoulders.”

The feeling of unconcern with which Bainbridge had come changed to something much more like pleasure when he went below, and found Ottilie. That young woman colored a little on meeting him, no doubt with reflections as to what he would think of her apparent changeableness of purpose. She was with Mrs. Hastings, who had presented to her a number of young men, among them young Stillsby, whose repute for wisdom was not of the most profound. She had been impressed at first by this person’s air of fashion ; then had wondered, and finally been amused, at the naive foolishness of many of his sayings. The new acquaintances still hovered about her, and Bainbridge could have her to himself at first but little.

“ You did not write to me, as you promised,” he said, seizing one of the opportunities. “ I have lived for nothing else ever since.”

“ You have lived very well then, apparently. Did I promise to write ? Well, I have been busy. It is but a short time now till our Commencement; and by the way, since you remind me of it, I did use the information in your pamphlets for my graduating essay. It is to be on The Reformation of Criminals.”

“ Bravo ! At last we have the matter settled. So you graduate. And then what ? ”

“ Return as directly as possible to my home in the West, and glad enough I shall be to get back to the dear old place again.”

“ I am sorry for that. I thought perhaps you might be intending to come here, Your uncle will not leave you a great fortune, I dare say, but he would be rational to live with. If you got on as well with the rest as with him, I think you might count on a very tolerable sort of existence. Why not return here ? ”

“ Nobody axed me, sir,” she said, archly misquoting the old ballad. Then, as if the subject were not a wholly comfortable one, she changed it, with “ Well, you cannot deny that this is palatial.”

“ Oh yes, I can. Do not limit my capacity for denying too hastily. In the palace there is a noble poverty of effect, as it were. They understand it in Italy, — a few handsome things along the walls, and the central spaces left free, for the noble occupants to walk up and down in, with their hands behind their backs, planning statecraft, wars, and matrimonial alliance, with the dukes, their neighbors.”

They were favorably posted for observing the guest of the evening. “ That is what I should like to be,” said Ottilie contemplatively. “It seems to me that if I were a man I should be very ambitious, and have as many people bowing down before me as possible.”

“ Oh, the point is to be something; not to make a lot of people think you are,” scoffed Bainbridge. It was a fine and somewhat startling sentiment, from him, but delivered with an air implying that it was of course impossible, while nothing less was worth striving for.

The President was in a sense a type of his class. He had risen most honorably from humble beginnings. He bad been a farmer’s lad, school-mas ter, general in the civil war, representative, governor of his State, and diplomate. He was a person of sterling worth, yet hardly of merit sufficient in itself to command the imposing recognition he had received. He had been chosen rather as a compromise candidate between the claims of the greater leaders, who destroy one another, and rarely attain the coveted prize. His whole presence exhaled the air of a calm, well-regulated life. He was of good figure, robust, neat and plain in attire. His dignity was apparently of a genuine, simple sort, arising from consciousness of the exalted nature of his success, yet not without a trace of angularity. He gave all who were presented to him a somewhat still shake of the hand. He had no great fund of ingenious or gallant discourse at command, but uttered now and then one of those mild pleasantries, that are received on such an occasion and from such a source as brilliant scintillations of wit.

As the pressure of new arrivals slackened, Rodman Harvey, the host, was to be seen conversing with him confidentially, and even giving slight taps of a forefinger on his sleeve, by way of emphasis. “Ah yes, indeed,” said envious lookers on, “ he will have his secretaryship fast enough.”

Angelica, slender, erect, with a long, simple “ train ” of rich material stretched out behind her, was like some rare bird. Mrs. Harvey was in brocaded satin, its front strewn with costly embroideries in seed pearls, garnets, and other precious stones. From a collar of large diamonds of the purest water depended a splendid ornament of opal and diamonds upon her full bosom, heaving with the pride natural to such an occasion. She was all smiles and comely majesty. When the guests had finally been received, she promenaded through the rooms on the arm of the President. Her aid, Angelica, had already withdrawn with Kingbolt of Kingboltsville, to take a turn in the dancing-hall.

It was at such times that Rodman Harvey was especially content with his spouse. This was her element. It was what he had had in mind when, at a certain stage of his increasing prosperity, touched by the subtile appetite for fashion and display, he had sought the best article of its kind, and married the widow of the elegant Charles Battledore. Perhaps, as he contemplated her, his thoughts may have gone back to that earlier one, his helpmate in the day of small things, — to her with whom he had trodden ingrain carpets, and sat upon chilly horse-hair furniture. Conference with her had always been a matter of the calmest reason. She had had no petulances of a spoiled child, no preposterous exaggerations, no stormingsabout, arising upon slight cause and abating as easily. She had been inclined to look upon his growing wealth as a delusion and a snare, and had hardly increased her scale of personal expenditure to the last.

The young children of that marriage were dead, with her. He thought of them all buried away together in the rural graveyard of his native place, and hers. He had been accustomed to alight from a train there, on summer days, at long intervals, to pass an hour beside their graves. There were urns on the posts of the high wooden gate, which entered from one side of the village green. The head-stones were stained and awry, the low mounds grown over with tall grass and wild flowers. How very far away it all seemed now ! Could it be that he had ever been bound in such intimate ties with those of so very different a circle ? Was it possible that in some vague future state the relationship was again to be renewed ?

The dancing-hall afforded Bainbridge, also, a pretext for taking Ottilie away. Dancing was an entertainment which he had disparaged, like other things, but she found him, to her surprise, no mean adept in it. He even aided her to execute beautifully a new step, of which she had got an inkling from the girls at school, and in consideration of this she could almost have condoned some of his errors. They found seats afterwards in the picture-gallery, under an orangetree, by the marble balustrade. She had an unusual animation and color, and fanned herself vigorously. The painter Millboard, wandering about, with little to do, having few acquaintances in the large assembly, made a furtive note, on his thumb-nail as it were, of the effect, as she reclined in a fauteuil, her fieecy white draperies scattered about the definite nucleus of her slim waist, her arms, and head.

Do see me! ” she said, admiring herself whimsically. “ One would think I had always been used to such magnificence, I take it so calmly. And as to my poor dress, for the last hour I have quite forgotten it.”

“ You will find that the fashion reporters, if they be worth their salt, have not been so remiss. It will certainly appear in the papers,”

“ That shows how little you know about such things. It cost — but never mind what it cost; and I had to make a good part of it myself. If you want to see dressing, look at my cousin Angelica. I am glad if you think it pretty, though. It is what I am to wear at Commencement. By good luck it was just done, or I could not have come.”

This was a further touch in a Cinderella-like aspect of her situation, as he represented it, which had pleased him from the first. “ Oh, an orange-tree! ” she babbled on, catching sight of the boughs above her head, and raising her fan a little towards them. “ Do tell me something about the orange-groves, and your manner of life there ! ”

“ Well, nothing is more charming than the silver blossoms and the golden fruit both on the tree at the same time, when the last crop has not been wholly picked off. There was a tree on my place which bore one year seven thousand oranges. That was not in my time, though, — no such luck. In the first enthusiasm of my venture I wrote some newspaper letters, which were complimented, by another newspaper of importance, as one of the most practical treatises on orange culture that had yet appeared. I did not know it, however, till I got back, a year or two afterwards. Perhaps posthumous fame is something like that, — a fine compliment that you never hear of. When I did know it, I secured the entrée to Mrs. Stoneglass’ literary receptions at once. Really, it was grim satire, so far as I was concerned. I was like one of those ingenious persons who go about lecturing on How to Get Rich, and have to jump out of the back windows with their satchels, because they have not money enough to pay their hotel bills.”

“ You did not succeed very well, then ? I had inferred so before.”

“ No, I did not succeed. One year a hurricane, such as had not been known for half a century, the next a frost, such as had not been known for another half a century. You might have heard a ton of coal drop, on this last occasion, as I woke up in the morning and found what had happened. I routed out the men to apply restoratives, but all to no purpose.”

“ And then what ? — as you ask me.”

“ I came into some more money presently, on the death of my grandfather. Did I ever happen to tell you that I was brought up by my grandfather ? He bore me no grudge, as it seemed, for the failure of the orange speculation. I went into the manufacturing of a lawnmower, with one half of the money, and loaned the other half, as a temporary accommodation, to a very dear friend. The lawn-mower was itself cut off by a crisis that overtook certain industries about that time. The temporary accommodation to my friend and classmate, for whom I would have done anything under the sun, and in whose equal devotion to me I had implicit confidence, proved to be of such duration that it not only was not returned when it could have saved the lawn-mower, but I have never seen it since. This dear friend was hopelessly insolvent, and knew it perfectly well, when he borrowed. He cleared off to Colorado, and that is the last I have seen of him from that day to this. And now you have about my whole story. It seems a little monotonous, does it not, — three such mischances ? Nevertheless, they happened as I tell you.”

“This, then, is what makes you so cynical ? ”

“ I do not admit that I am cynical ; but naturally experiences of the kind hardly improve one’s temper.”

“ You do not think, perhaps,” she suggested, hesitatingly, “ that business may not have been your strong point ? ”

“ No, I cannot say that I had thought so. My view, on observing the countless thousands pouring into the professions, was to try and do something more distinctly practical and useful in the world. Where was the fault with that idea ? ”

“Well, you must try again, and a great many times more.”

“At my age one does not try very much more. He takes what is sent to him. There are certain advantages in the law, however. It is a way of getting even. It affords delightful opportunities for rascality.”

“At your age!” Ottilie exclaimed, ignoring this gibe. “ Why, you are a very young man.”

Indeed! Was it thus he impressed her ? They were fast approaching to terms of equality, truly. This came of being betrayed into gravity, and making confidences which he had not made to any one before, he could not tell when. By way of recovering ground he became as recklessly flippant as possible.

Ottilie could hardly credit the occurrence, in this society, of doings which would better have suited her idea of the times of the Borgias. The suiciding, dueling, opium-eating, and eloping Huyskamps were of the most excellent family. The grandfather, from whom their money was derived, had been a beau in two hemispheres, the companion of Louis Philippe and Ludwig of Bavaria. As to the actors in some of these dramas being still welcomed and fêted, it seemed to her monstrous.

“ You must know that this putting down of people is not so easy,” said Bainbridge, in his deriding tone. “ We good ones are not strong enough. The bold and bad override us, and there is nothing to do but to take it out in browbeating the timid and weak. At the same time, I think it doubtful whether the upper circle of society is so much worse than others below.”

“ So much worse ? ” exclaimed Ottilie with heat. “ Ought it not to be a hundred times better ? With every comfort and luxury, with the opportunity to travel, to be educated, to be cultured and perfected on every side, it ought to admit of no comparison.” She had a way of putting back her hair from her temples with both hands, and bending earnestly forward, in her arguing.

“ That is a point of view worthy of note, but I doubt if you will find frivolous wealth and luxury to have ever worked that way. First, there is the period of hardship and striving for a certain end; then, when it is attained, the splendid efflorescence, by some called decadence. For my part, I ask, Why the common prejudice against decadences ? They are the autumn season, the legitimate fruition, of all that has preceded. Why is the battle a so much better thing than the victory ? The poets and orators are continually giving us to understand that the struggle for liberty is particularly commendable, while the peace and plenty which were its objects are of no account whatever.”

“Oh, are you never serious?” exclaimed the young girl.

Mrs. Hastings now came to find Ottilie, in order to take her to the supperroom. The tables were so heavily laden with plate and the costly banquet as to require to be sustained, rumor ran, by extra braces of iron underneath. Haricot’s men, in unexceptionable evening dress, handed out the viands to the thicket of reaching hands, calling, “ Une glace!” " Trois glaces ! ” Now and then others made their way through the throng, bearing aloft on platters new supplies of game, oysters, and salads, with a deprecating “ Please ! please ! ”

Mrs. Eglantine approached the discreet financial magnate, Bloomfield, taking his salad by himself at a corner of the mantel-piece, and said, “ I want you to do something with my Missouri 6’s. It is the only chance I have to get at you. You know everything. And do you think Devious Air Line is going higher ? ”

Mrs. Sprowle said to Mrs. Clef, finding that lady by chance in a chair beside her, “ Why do we never have a gentleman for President ? ” To which Mrs. Clef replied good-naturedly,“Why indeed ! ” Then Mrs. Sprowle, stopping Kingbolt, who was hurrying by with some refreshment for Angelica Harvey, for whom he had found a seat, after their dancing, in one of the rooms near by, asked him some question about his friend St. Hill. “ He is such an agreeable man,” she said, — “ of the best old Southern stock, which I have always highly esteemed. I do not see him here to-night.”

“ He does not come here, I believe. There is some misunderstanding, some difficulty of a business sort, between him and Harvey.”

“ Ah ! indeed ! I must ask him about it,” she said, and Kingbolt passed on.

Her son, Austin Sprowle, having plentiful leave of absence, as it seemed, from the side of his betrothed, came up and paid compliments, by way of passing the time, to Mrs. Clef, who received them as affably as though she had never uttered a disparaging word of him.

“ How delightfully you are looking ! ” said Sprowle. “ We have hardly met since last year, at Saratoga. Saratoga is very good for us New Yrorkers. We need something of that kind, a certain atmosphere, a — er — variation ; but we must not drink the waters, — we must not, really.” His tone was almost tragical.

“ When are we going to have another of our little dinners at the Four-InHand ? ” Mr. Rowley asked of Miss Ada Trull.

“ Sh ! All that is over for the present,” she replied. “ Somebody has been telling mamma that from eleven in the morning till eleven at night is too long for us to be out in the drags ; and that Mrs. Calloway, our chaperon, was younger than most of the girls; and that some of you young men drank too much champagne.”

Another interview took place between Bainbridge and Ottilie, later in the evening, just before the young girl’s departure. Her purpose of going away, and probably not again returning was once more touched upon.

“ Of course I could never get you to write to me, under any pretext,” said the young man, “ but suppose we think of each other. Suppose we fix certain times and hours — as at ten on the 1st and 15th of each month, say, — when you will agree to think of me, and I of you. Perhaps some mysterious or electrical influence will pass between us. Remarkable scientific developments may take place. Who knows ? ”

“ Oh, there is a difference in longitude,” she replied, smiling elusively. “ I should have to remember you at eight forty, or nine twenty, or something that way, when here it was ten already. I could never calculate it.”

“ This is really a very sad and solemn occasion, then. As likely as not I shall never see you again.”

“ N—ever,” with a mock-melancholy waving of the head, from side to side.

she parodied again.

“ Perhaps you think I do not care, — but I had taken a great liking to you.”

She would have been touched by this, if she had thought it in earnest; but she understood his raillery perfectly well, and replied, “ I wish I could say I returned the compliment.”

“ Why can you not ? Am I so very disagreeable ? ”

“ You have tried to patronize me a good deal, for one thing,” she said, casting about for reasons. “And then, I have hardly ever heard you utter a sentiment I could tell to be in earnest.”

“ Oh, is that it ? ” reflectively. “ But in your case I am earnestness itself.”

“ Nothing is worse than to be heavy on a frivolous subject.”

In such tantalizing fashion, with a bright smile and a shake of the hand, she was gone. It had been a pleasant acquaintance ; but this was the end of it. The thoughts of Russell Bainbridge drifted after her not a little, from his office, up in the mansard of the Magoon Building, where his new-fledged law practice was developing. He was of course as incapable of foolish sentiment now as the Magoon Building itself. . . . But she had been a bright, piquant person, with excellent traits, and wherever she went he wished her well.

Meanwhile, — for we need not leave so speedily this rare festivity at Rodman Harvey’s,— the tête-à-tête which the daughter of the house had granted Kingbolt of Kingboltsville had been in progress. The young man had made but a short visit to his estates, it seemed, and then, for reasons best known to himself, returned. The painter Millboard did not fail to include Angelica too in his hovering admirations. He regretted that such models as these could not be had, that masterpieces in art might be more common than they are.

A curiously simple skirt of lustrous, creamy satin fell down over her limbs, which it delicately outlined. The waist had no other support than small straps upon each shoulder; but she wore over it a jacket of rich lace, amber-hued with the touch of age, and (loosely around her neck) a gossamer scarf, which she readjusted from time to time as it became slightly disarranged. Where the lace was drawn thin, the leaf and snowcrystal patterns seemed daintily printed upon the smooth, firm flesh. Her arms were of a more pinkish tinge than her face. They were lovely arms, capable of weaving dangerous spells even from afar, and Kingbolt had ventured into fatally close proximity to them.

“ I don’t know when I have enjoyed a waltz so much before,” he protests, passing a cambric handkerchief over his forehead. “ I had given up dancing, to tell the truth. I have hated to ask an American girl for a long time. One does not reverse abroad, as you know, and I had quite got out of the way of it.”

“ To what shall I ascribe this exception in my favor ? Your reversing is perfect; I have no fault to find with it.”

“ Oh, you would turn anybody’s head; and of course a person is not going to let slip an opportunity to put his arm around the most beautiful girl in two hemispheres, when it is open to him.”

Miss Angelica had two very distinct manners. She could assume, when she chose, — and she often chose, — a chilling dignity ; but with her intimates she professed to like natural people, and to hate “ the stiff kind.” At this time, too, she was permitting herself a certain sisterly policy, warranted, as she considered, by her new situation in life, towards some of the young men. But this expression of Kingbolt’s was trenching a little on the permissible naturalness. She called him “ Wretch ! ” however, and then inquired, —

“ Why do you waste such things on me, an old engaged girl ? Why do you not say them to Daisy Goldstone or Ada Trull ? I suppose you know that I am ‘ another’s,’ as the novelists say ? ”

“ Oh, yes, I know it.”

“ Why ! You say it as if you were sorry.”

“I am,— damnably,” he broke out with a changed manner. The epithet was half muttered but she heard it. It appeared that she had led him too far. She had had no objection to amusing herself a little while her freedom remained; but if it were possible, after all they had both seen of the world, that he were going to annoy her with an absurd earnestness, if he were going to look and talk in a savage way like that, it was high time to turn over a new leaf with him, and that instantly. In the purpose she had formed for the disposal of her own fate she was fixed and inflexible. Kingbolt had already begun some further words in the new vein. She looked about for a pretext to repulse them. Dr. Wyburd, with Mr. Hacklcy — who, on account of his intimacy with Rodman Harvey, assumed an unusual air of geniality and good-fellowship in this house — as his principal auditor, was saying, near by, —

“ When you hear the first part of a good story, you are pretty sure to hear the last. It comes to you from different sources, and you finally put all the parts together. Now, I recollect a certain ” —

“ Oh, an anecdote ! an anecdote ! ” exclaimed Angelica, jumping up, and joining herself to this group, looking back to Kingbolt as a sign that he might follow if he would. She returned presently to her mamma, and whatever slight contact she may have had with the misguided young millionaire during the rest of the evening was marked by the calmest indifference.

Her mamma took it upon herself, when the guests had gone, and they two were alone for a moment in her sitting-room, in the small hours of the morning, to complain of the prolonged tête-à-tête with Kingbolt. She had seen something of it while moving through the rooms with the President. “ I could observe,” she said, “ that Austin was not at all pleased. He was much annoyed.”

Angelica, nettled through consciousness of rectitude, refused either to explain or deny anything. “ If Austin is not pleased with what pleases me, so much the worse for him. I will not be argued with. Leave me in peace,” she said, and retired petulantly up the staircase to the bed-chamber in flowered silk chintz and gilt.

The mamma, with a sigh, murmured after her a formula intended to convey her sense of an incorrigibility far out of the common : “ She is a regular Harvey.”

William Henry Bishop.