grey eyes, and remembering that this man
with whom she disputed had just lost his hopes in life--his hopes of
_her_--she reached out impulsively and grasped his arm.

"Oh, Dick!" she said; "forgive me! But I am so utterly miserable, dear,
that any poor little straw seems worth grasping at."

So we must leave them; it was a situation full of poor human pathos. The
emotions surging within these two hearts would have afforded an
interesting study for the magical pen of Charles Dickens.

But we cannot pause to essay it; the tide of our narrative bears us
elsewhere.

Mr. J. J. Oppner, the pride of Wall Street, when, his fascinating
daughter, Zoe, beside him, he rose to address his guests at the Hotel
Astoria that evening, would have provided a study equally interesting to
Charles Dickens or to the late Professor Darwin. It would have puzzled
even the distinguished biologist to reconcile the two species,
represented by Mr. Oppner and Zoe, with any common origin. The
millionaire's seamed and yellow face looked like nothing so much as a
magnified section of a walnut. Whilst the girl, with her cloud of
copper-dusted brown hair trapped within an Oriental head-dress, her
piquant beauty enhanced, if that were possible, by the softly shaded
lights, and the bewitching curves revealed by her evening gown borrowing
a more subtle witchery from their sombre environment of black-coated
plutocrats, justified the most inspired panegyric that ever had poured
from the fountain-pen of a New York reporter. Mr. Oppner said:

"Gentlemen,--We have met this evening for _a_ special purpose. With
everyone's _per_mission, we will _ad_journ to another room and see how
we can fix things up for Mr. Severac Bablon."

He led the way without loss of time, his small, dried figure lost
between that of John Macready ("the King of Coolgardie"), a stalwart,
iron-grey Irishman, and the unshapely bulk of Baron Hague, once more
perilously adventured upon English soil.

Sir Leopold Jesson, trim, perfectly groomed, his high, bald cranium
gleaming like the dome of Solomon's temple, followed, deep in
conversation with a red, raw-boned Scotsman, whose features seemed badly
out of drawing, and whose eyebrows suggested shrimps. This was Hector
Murray, the millionaire who had built and endowed more public baths and
institutions than any man since the Emperor Vespasian. Last of all, went
Julius Rohscheimer, that gross figurehead of British finance, saying,
with a sa