ow actual
opportunities after the boundless illusions and hopes of youth; the
limited outlook, the limited breathing-room, the limited fortunes. Bars
at the windows, closed doors on every hand.

It was with the feeling that Miss Seymour was no more truly in holiday
spirits than was he that he turned toward her, as toward a spot of
shadow amid too fervid sunshine. It would be more congenial, drifting
with her to the languid measure of this very modern, morbidly emotional
waltz, knowing that, whatever their light talk, they alike felt life to
be a sad affair, than going through livelier evolutions with a young
person who would secretly desire him to flatter and flirt. An instinct
founded less upon male conceit than knowledge of his world drove the
young bachelor determined to remain unattached to seek in preference
women who would found no smallest hope upon his notice of them.

So, keeping at the edge of the room in order to be out of the way of the
dancers, he started on his way to Miss Seymour, while Charlie, whose
mood was as different from Gerald's as was his eye,--that brown eye
which looked upon the world as a barrel of very passable oysters, of
which he would open as many as he could get hold of,--started after.

The approach of a stormily whirling couple, waltzing _all'_
_italiana_, and then another and still another following, forced
them to suspend their journey. While they prudently waited, "Who is
that?" came from Charlie in a voice of acute curiosity.

Gerald, after half a glance at him, mechanically looked in the same
direction.

There stood at the door opening from the reception-room an unknown.

When it was said that our young men knew everybody at the Fosses'
soiree, it was not strictly meant that there might not be a person or
two whom they had not seen before: a plain little visiting cousin whom
the Bentivoglios had begged permission to bring; a new face of a young
Italian introduced by a fellow officer. But at the door now, displacing
a good deal of air, stood a real and striking unknown, in a Paris dress
and diamonds and a smile.

Gerald did not take the trouble to answer Charlie; to himself he said
that this was perhaps Mrs. Hawthorne, the Fosses' new friend.

Mrs. Foss had hastened to meet her. Leslie, disengaging herself from a
partner, left him standing in the middle of the room while she hastened
likewise. It must be Mrs. Hawthorne.

Gerald took back his eyes, and continued on his way