glass, that sparkled
with frost in the mild moonlight.

"Oh, come, maidens, come, o'er the blue, rolling wave,
The lovely should still be the care of the brave--
Trancadillo, trancadillo, trancadillo, dillo, dillo, dillo!"

sang the misguided slaves of fashion, as they sped out of hearing.

"Trancadillo!" rumbled Mr. Van Riper. "I'd like to trancadillo them,
consume 'em!" and then he cursed his old friend's social circle for a
parcel of trumpery fools; and Mrs. Van Riper, lying by his side, sighed
softly with chastened regret and hopeless aspiration.

But everybody else--everybody who was anybody--blessed the Dolphs and
the Dolphs' cellar, and their man-servant and their maid-servant, and
their roasted ox and their saddle of venison, and the distinguished
stranger who was within their gates; and young Mrs. Dolph was made as
welcome as she made others.

For the little girl with the great dark eyes took to all this giddiness
as naturally as possible--after her quiet fashion. The dark eyes
sparkled with subdued pleasure that had no mean pride in it when she sat
at the head of her great mahogany table, and smiled at the double row of
bright faces that hemmed in the gorgeous display of the Dolph silver and
china and fine linen. And it was wonderful how charming were the famous
Des Anges manners, when they were softened and sweetened by so much
grace and beauty.

"Who would have thought she had it in her?" said the young ladies down
in St. John's Park. "You remember her, don't you, what a shy little slip
of a thing she was when we were at old Dumesnil's together? Who was it
used to say that she had had the life grandmothered out of her?"

"Fine little creature, that wife of Dolph's," said the young men as they
strolled about in Niblo's Garden. "Dolph wouldn't have had the road all
to himself if that old dragon of a grandmother had given the girl half a
chance. 'Gad, she's an old grenadier! They say that Dolph had to put her
through her facings the day after he was married, and that he did it in
uncommon fine style, too."

"He's a lucky devil, that Dolph," the younger ones would sigh. "Nothing
to do, all the money he wants, pretty wife, and the best wine in New
York! I wish _my_ old man would cut the shop and try to get an education
in wine."

Their devotion to the frivolities of fashion notwithstanding, the young
Dolphs were a loving, and, in a way, a domestic couple. Of course,
everybody they knew had to g