d, and his are busy with some woman that bothered him
long ago, and may have a claim on him. No wan told me, but my seein' and
hearing are sharp as ever."

"Good-by, Mrs. Montgomery Dillon," he said, bowing at the door.

"Au plaisir, Monseigneur," she replied with a curtsey, and Judy opened
the outer door, face and mien like an Egyptian statue of the twelfth
dynasty.

Anne Dillon watched him go with a sigh of deep contentment. How often
she had dreamed of men as distinguished leaving her presence and her
house in this fashion; and the dream had come true. All her life she had
dreamed of the elegance and importance, which had come to her through
her strange son, partly through her own ambition and ability. She now
believed that if one only dreams hard enough fortune will bring dreams
true. As the life which is past fades, for all its reality, into the
mist-substance of dreams, why should not the reverse action occur? Had
she been without the rich-colored visions which illuminated her idle
hours, opportunity might have found her a spiritless creature, content
to take a salary from her son and to lay it by for the miserable days of
old age. Out upon such tameness! She had found life in her dreams, and
the two highest expressions of that life were Mrs. Montgomery Dillon
and the Dowager Countess of Skibbereen.

As a pagan priestess might have arrayed herself for appearance in the
sanctuary, she clothed herself in purple and gold on the evening of the
farewell dinner.

Arthur escorted his mother and Honora to the Vandervelt residence.

As the trio made their bows, the aspirant for diplomatic honors rejoiced
that his gratitude for real favors reflected itself in objects so
distinguished. He was a grateful man, this Vandervelt, and broad-minded,
willing to gild the steps by which he mounted, and to honor the humblest
who honored him: an aristocrat in the American sense of the term,
believing that those who wished should be encouraged to climb as high as
natural capacity and opportunity permitted. The party sat down slightly
bored, they had gone through it so often; but for Anne Dillon each
moment and each circumstance shone with celestial beauty. She floated in
the ether. The mellow lights, the glitter of silver and glass, the
perfume of flowers, the soft voices, all sights and sounds, made up a
harmony which lifted her body from the ground as on wings, more like a
dream than her richest dreams. For conversation, some one