ad been safe asleep in their nursery beds.

Mrs. Marchbanks, like any other burnt-out woman, had gone to the home
that offered to her,--her sister-in-law's; Olivia and Adelaide were
going to the Haddens; the children were at Mrs. Hobart's; the things
that, in their rich and beautiful arrangement, had made _home_, as
well as enshrined the Marchbanks family in their sacredness of
elegance, were only miscellaneous "loads" now, transported and
discharged in haste, or heaped up confusedly to await removal. And the
sleek servants, to whom, doubtless, it had seemed that their Rome
could never fall, were suddenly, as much as any common Bridgets and
Patricks, "out of a place."

Not that there would be any permanent difference; it was only the
story and attitude of a night. The power was still behind; the
"Tailor" would sew things over again directly. Mrs. Roger Marchbanks
would be comparatively composed and in order, at Mrs. Lewis's,
in a few days,--receiving her friends, who would hurry to make
"fire-calls," as they would to make party or engagement or other
special occasion visits; the cordons would be stretched again; not one
of the crowd of people who went freely in and out of her burning rooms
that night, and worked hardest, saving her library and her pictures
and her carpets, would come up in cool blood and ring her door-bell
now; the sanctity and the dignity would be as unprofanable as ever.

It was about four in the morning--the fire still burning--when Mrs.
Holabird went round upon the out-skirts of the groups of lookers-on,
to find and gather together her own flock. Rosamond and Ruth stood in
a safe corner with the Haddens. Where was Barbara?

Down against the close trunks of a cluster of linden-trees had been
thrown cushions and carpets and some bundles of heavy curtains, and
the like. Coming up behind, Mrs. Holabird saw, sitting upon this heap,
two persons. She knew Barbara's hat, with its white gull's breast; but
somebody had wrapped her up in a great crimson table-cover, with a
bullion fringe. Somebody was Harry Goldthwaite, sitting there beside
her; Barbara, with only her head visible, was behaving, out here in
this unconventional place and time, with a tranquillity and composure
which of late had been apparently impossible to her in parlors.

[Illustration]

"What will Mrs. Marchbanks do with Mrs. Hobart after this, I wonder?"
Mrs. Holabird heard Harry say.

"She'll give her a sort of brevet," replied Bar