nd
changed. The palms, and flowers, and lights which decorated the room;
the orchestra's river of dance-music; the men, all in the black livery
which--on the surface--marks the final conquest of civilization over
barbarism; the beautiful gowns, the sparkling jewels, and the white
shoulders and arms of the ladies--all these made me wonder if I had not
been transported to some Mayfair or Newport, so pictorial, so
decorative, so charged with art, it seemed to be. The young people,
carrying on their courtships in these unfamiliar halls, their
disappearances into the more remote and tenebrous outskirts of the
assembly--all seemed to me to be taking place on the stage, or in some
romance.

I told Alice about this as we walked home--it was only across the
street--to our own new house.

"Don't tell any one about this feeling of yours," said she. "It betrays
your provincialism, my dear. You should feel, for the first time in your
life, perfectly at home. 'Armor, rusting on his walls, On the blood of
Clifford calls,' you know."

"Mine didn't hear the call," said I; "I'm probably the first of my race
to wear this--But I enjoyed it."

"Well, I am too full of something that took place to discuss the
matter," said she, as we sat down at home. "I am perplexed. You know
about Mr. Cornish and Josie, don't you?"

She startled me, for I had never told her a word.

"Know about them!" I cried, a little dramatically. "What do you mean?
No, I don't!"

"Why, what's the matter, Albert?" she queried. "I haven't charged them
with midnight assassination, or anything like that! Only, it seems that
he has been making love to her, for some time, in his cool and
self-contained way. I've known it, and she's been perfectly conscious,
that I knew; but never said anything to me of it, and seemed unwilling
even to approach the subject. But to-night Cecil and I found her out in
the canopied seat by the fountain, and I knew something was the matter,
and sent Cecil away. Something told me that Mr. Cornish was concerned
in it, and I asked her at once where he went.

"'He is gone!' said she. 'I don't know where he is, and I don't care! I
wish I might never see him any more!'

"You may imagine my surprise. When a young woman uses such language
about a man, it is a certainty that she isn't voicing her true feelings,
or that it isn't a normal love affair. So I wormed out of her that he
had made her an offer."

"'Well,' said I, 'if, as I infer from yo