t
Brock looks like me, so what's the odds? Haw, haw! Ripping! Eh, Mr.
Rodney?"

"Ripping? Ripping what? Good God, am I ripping anything?" gasped Mr.
Rodney, who was fussy and fat and generally futile. He seemed to grow
suddenly uncomfortable, as if ripping was a habit with him.

Dinner was a success. Brock shone with a refulgence that bedimmed all
expectations. His wife was delighted; in all of the four years of
married life, Roxbury had never been so brilliant, so deliciously
English (to use her own expression). Constance tingled with pride. Of
late, she had experienced unusual difficulty in diverting her gaze from
the handsome impostor, and her thoughts were ever of him--in
justification of a platonic interest, of course, no more than that.
To-night her eyes and thoughts were for him alone,--a circumstance
which, could he have felt sure, would have made him wildly happy,
instead of inordinately furious in his complete misunderstanding of her
manner toward Freddie Ulstervelt, who had no compunction about making
love to two girls at the same time. She was never so beautiful, never so
vivacious, never so resourceful. Brock was under the spell; he was
fascinated; he had to look to himself carefully in order to keep his
wits in the prescribed channel.

His self-esteem received a severe shock at the opera. Mrs. Medcroft,
with malice aforethought, insisted that Ulstervelt should take her
husband's seat. As the box held but six persons, the unfortunate Brock
was compelled to shift more or less for himself. Inwardly raging, he
suavely assured the party--Freddie in particular--that he would find a
seat in the body of the house and would join them during the
_Entr'acte_. Then he went out and sat in the foyer. It was fortunate
that he hated Wagner. Before the end of the act he was joined by Mr.
Rodney, horribly bored and eager for relief. In a near-by _cafe_ they
had a whiskey and soda apiece, and, feeling comfortably reinforced,
returned to the opera house arm-in-arm, long and short, thin and fat,
liberally discoursing upon the intellectuality of Herr Wagner.

"Say, you're not at all like an Englishman," exclaimed Mr. Rodney
impulsively, even gratefully.

"Eh, what?" gasped Brock, replacing his eyeglass. "Oh, I say, now, 'pon
my word, haw, haw!"

"You've got an American sense of humour, Medcroft, that's what you have.
You recognise the joke that Wagner played on the world. Pardon me for
saying it, sir, but I didn't think