ordelia
was not lovable, but not all of us are who may be better than she. She
was monopolized by the hope of getting a man; but a mere alliance with
trousers was not the sum of her hope; they must jingle with coin.

It was strange, then, that she should be dressing to meet Jerry Donahue,
who was no better than gilly to the Commissioner of Public Works,
drawing a small salary from a clerkship he never filled, while he served
the Commissioner as a second left hand. But if we could see into
Cordelia's mind we would be surprised to discover that she did not
regard herself as flesh-and-blood Mahoney, but as romantic Clarice
Delamour, and she only thought of Jerry as James the butler. The
voracious reader of the novels of to-day will recall the story of
_Clarice, or Only a Lady's-Maid,_ which many consider the best of the
several absorbing tales that Lulu Jane Tilley has written. Cordelia had
read it twenty times, and almost knew it by heart. Her constant dream
was that she could be another Clarice, and shape her life like hers.
The plot of the novel needs to be briefly told, since it guided
Cordelia's course.

Clarice was maid to a wealthy society dowager. James the butler fell in
love with Clarice when she first entered the household, and she, hearing
the servants' gossip about James's savings and salary, had encouraged
his attentions. He pressed her to marry him. But young Nicholas
Stuyvesant came home from abroad to find his mother ill and Clarice
nursing her. Every day he noticed the modest rosy maid moving
noiselessly about like a sunbeam. Her physical perfection profoundly
impressed him. In her presence he constantly talked to his mother about
his admiration for healthy women. Each evening Clarice reported to him
the condition of the mother, and on one occasion mentioned that she had
never known ache, pain, or malady in her life. The young man often
chatted with her in the drawing-room, and James the butler got his
_conge_. Mr. Stuyvesant induced his mother to make Clarice her companion,
and then he met her at picture exhibitions, and in Central Park by
chance, and next--every one will recall the exciting scene--he paid
passionate court to her "in the pink sewing-room, where she had
reclined on soft silken sofa pillows, with her tiny slippers upon the
head of a lion whose skin formed a rug before her." Clarice thought him
unprincipled, and repulsed him. When the widow recovered her health and
went to Newport, the fo