done at high noon to a duchess in her chariot. "But
I'm wasting your time from your mother; so good-morning; and may your
Christmas be happier than its eve."

"Good-by! And oh, _how_ I thank you!" the girl said, again extending
her hand over the cab door. "I'll tell Rose, and _she_ shall thank
you, better than I can!"

"Good-night! But don't trouble _her_," Van said, releasing the girl's
hand. "One minute, Murphy," he added aside to the driver; "here's your
Christmas-gift!"

A bright gold piece glinted in the dirty fur glove, in which Dennis
Murphy looked to find a shilling under the next gas-lamp.

"Blanche! and the same golden hair, too!" Van muttered to himself, as
the cab rocked and ricketted down the street. "Well, I suppose that is
what the poet means by 'the magic of a name'!" and he suddenly
recalled that he was still standing bareheaded in the blast. "And Rose
Wood's sister looks like that! Well, verily one half the world does
_not_ know how the other half lives!"

Then he turned and strode rapidly homeward; pulling hard, as he
thought many strange thoughts, on the dead cigar between his lips.

Once in his own parlor, Van Morris walked straight to the mirror over
the mantel, and looked long and steadily at himself. Then he tossed
Mr. Allmand's half-smoked cigar contemptuously into the grate, lit one
he selected carefully from the carved stand near, and threw himself
into a smoking-chair before the ruddy glow of coals.

"I must be getting old," he soliloquized. "I didn't use to get bored
so easily by these things. Either balls are not what they were, or _I_
am not. Now, 'there's no place like home!' Not much of a box to call
home, either!" And he glanced round the really elegant apartment in
half-disgust. "There's _something_ lacking! Andy's the best fellow in
the world, but he's so wanting in order. Poor old boy! Wonder if he
_will_ drink anything more? I surely must blow him up to-morrow
morning. How deucedly sharp _she_ is!" and he smiled to himself. "She
saw through Rose Wood's game at a glance. Wonder if she saw through
_me_?"

He looked steadily into the glowing coals, as though castles were
building there. Once or twice his lips moved soundlessly; and suddenly
he reached over to the escritoire near by, and taking an oval case
from it, opened it, and gazed long and earnestly at the picture in it.
The face was the average one of a young girl, with stiff plaits of
hair stiffly tossed over the shoul