made by Blanche to keep him interested, when
Lovering came into the library, and, seeing them, said, with a spur of
banter in his voice:

"Come, come, this will never do! You're a fine fellow, Whitford, and I
don't wonder that Miss Birtwell tolerates you, but monopoly is not the
word to-night. I claim the privilege of a guest and a word or two with
our fair hostess."

And he held out his arm to Blanche, who had risen from the table. She
could do no less than take it. He drew her from the room. As they
passed out of the door Blanche cast a look back at Whitford. Those who
saw it were struck by its deep concern.

"Confound his impudence!" ejaculated Ellis Whitford as he saw Blanche
vanish through the library door. Rising from the table he stood with an
irresolute air, then went slowly from the apartment and mingled with
the company, moving about in an aimless kind of way, until he drifted
again into the supper-room, the tables of which the waiters were
constantly replenishing, and toward which a stream of guests still
flowed. The company here was noisier now than when he left it a short
time before. Revelry had taken the place of staid propriety. Glasses
clinked like a chime of bells, voices ran up into the higher keys, and
the loud musical laugh of girls mingled gaily with the deeper tones of
their male companions. Young maidens with glasses of sparkling
champagne or rich brown and amber sherry in their hands were calling
young men and boys to drink with them, and showing a freedom and
abandon of manner that marked the degree of their exhilaration. Wine
does not act in one way on the brain of a young man and in another way
on the brain of a young woman. Girls of eighteen or twenty will become
as wild and free and forgetful of propriety as young men of the same
age if you bring them together at a feast and give them wine freely.

We do not exaggerate the scene in Mr. Birtwell's supper-room, but
rather subdue the picture. As Whitford drew nigh the supper-room the
sounds of boisterous mirth struck on his ears and stirred him like the
rattle of a drum. The heaviness went out of his limbs, his pulse beat
more quickly, he felt a new life in his veins. As he passed in his name
was called in a gay voice that he did not at first recognize, and at
the same moment a handsome young girl with flushed face and sparkling
eyes came hastily toward him, and drawing her hand in his arm, said, in
a loud familiar tone:

"You shall be