difficulty in filling up, you may be sure, in so gay a place.

Two or three nights after this, a little before dinner-time, while I
was standing talking to her, she suddenly went very white, and in a
fluttering voice gasped, "Look yonder!" I looked. A rather slight
dark-haired young man was entering the bar, with a very stylish pretty
woman at his side. As they sat down and claimed the waiter, some
distance away, Rosalind whispered, "That's my husband!"

"Oh!" I said; "but that's no reason for your fainting. Pull yourself
together. Take a drop of brandy." But woman will never take the most
obvious restorative, and Rosalind presently recovered without the
brandy. She looked covertly at her husband, with tragic eyes.

"He's much younger than I imagined him," I said,--reserving for myself
the satisfaction which this discovery had for me.

"Oh, yes, he's really quite a boy," said Rosalind; adding under her
breath, "Dear fellow! how I love him!"

"And hate him too!" she superadded, as she observed his evident
satisfaction with his present lot. Indeed the experiment appeared to
be working most successfully with him; nor, looking at his companion,
could I wonder. She was a sprightly young woman, very smart and merry
and decorously voluptuous, and of that fascinating prettiness that wins
the hearts of boys and storms the footlights. One of her
characteristics soothed the heart of Rosalind. She had splendid red
hair, almost as good as her own.

"He's been faithful to my hair, at all events," she said, trying to be
nonchalant.

"And the eyes are not unlike," I added, meaning well.

"I'm sorry you think so," said Rosalind, evidently piqued.

"Well, never mind," I tried to make peace, "she hasn't your hands,"--I
knew that women cared more about their hands than their faces.

"How do you know?" she retorted; "you cannot see through her gloves."

"Would any gloves disguise your hands?" I persisted. "They would shine
through the mittens of an Esquimau."

"Well, enough of that! See--I know it's wickedly mean of me--but
couldn't you manage to sit somewhere near them and hear what they are
saying? Of course you needn't tell me anything it would be mean to
hear, but only what--"

"You would like to know."

But this little plot died at its birth, for that very minute the
threatened couple arose, and went out arm in arm, apparently as
absurdly happy as two young people can be.

As they passed out, one of Ros