ly from the greater rarity of its being
well formed and even ladylike.

As she kept her way along the corridor and ascended an iron staircase,
she was passed by others more preoccupied in business at the various
public offices. One of these visitors, however, stopped as if struck
by some fancied resemblance in her appearance, turned, and followed
her. But when she halted before a door marked "Mayor's Office," he
paused also, and, with a look of half humorous bewilderment and a
slight glance around him as if seeking for some one to whom to impart
his arch fancy, he turned away. The woman then entered a large
anteroom with a certain quick feminine gesture of relief, and, finding
it empty of other callers, summoned the porter, and asked him some
question in a voice so suppressed by the official severity of the
apartment as to be hardly audible. The attendant replied by entering
another room marked "Mayor's Secretary," and reappeared with a
stripling of seventeen or eighteen, whose singularly bright eyes were
all that was youthful in his composed features. After a slight
scrutiny of the woman--half boyish, half official--he desired her to be
seated, with a certain exaggerated gravity as if he was over-acting a
grown-up part, and, taking a card from her, reentered his office.
Here, however, he did NOT stand on his head or call out a confederate
youth from a closet, as the woman might have expected. To the left was
a green baize door, outlined with brass-studded rivets like a cheerful
coffin-lid, and bearing the mortuary inscription, "Private." This he
pushed open, and entered the Mayor's private office.

The municipal dignitary of San Francisco, although an erect,
soldier-like man of strong middle age, was seated with his official
chair tilted back against the wall and kept in position by his feet on
the rungs of another, which in turn acted as a support for a second
man, who was seated a few feet from him in an easy-chair. Both were
lazily smoking.

The Mayor took the card from his secretary, glanced at it, said
"Hullo!" and handed it to his companion, who read aloud "Kate Howard,"
and gave a prolonged whistle.

"Where is she?" asked the Mayor.

"In the anteroom, sir."

"Any one else there?"

"No, sir."

"Did you say I was engaged?"

"Yes, sir; but it appears she asked Sam who was with you, and when he
told her, she said, All right, she wanted to see Colonel Pendleton too."

The men glanced interrogativ