le are talking
of us, and, like the valet in the comedy, we begin confessing our sins
before we 're accused of them!"

"I know that is _your_ theory, papa," said she, laughing, "and that one
ought always to 'die innocent.'"

"Of course, my dear. It is only the jail chaplain benefits by what is
called 'a full disclosure of the terrible tragedy.'"

"I hear my carriage creeping up quietly to the door," said she,
listening. "Be sure you let me see you early tomorrow. Good-night."

CHAPTER XXXVI. A GRAVE SCENE IN LIGHT COMPANY

Moralists have often found a fruitful theme in the utter barrenness of
all the appliances men employ for their pleasures. What failures follow
them, what weariness, what satiety and heart-sickness! The feast of
Belshazzar everywhere!

To the mere eye nothing could be more splendid, nothing more suggestive
of enjoyment, than the Pergola of Florence when brilliantly lighted
and thronged with a gay and merry company. Character figures in every
variety fancy or caprice could suggest--Turks, Styrians, Highlanders,
Doges, Dervishes, and Devils--abounded, with Pifferari from Calabria,
Muleteers, Matadors, and Conjurers; Boyards from Tobolsk jostled Male
Crusaders, and Demons that might have terrified St. Anthony flitted past
with Sisters of Charity! Strange parody upon the incongruities of
our every-day life, costume serving but to typify the moral
incompatibilities which are ever at work in our actual existence! for
are not the people we see linked together--are not the social groupings
we witness--just as widely separated by every instinct and every
sentiment as are these characters in all their motley? Are the two
yonder, as they sit at the fireside, not as remote from each other as
though centuries had rolled between them? They toil along, it is true,
together; they drag the same harden, but with different hopes and
fears and motives. Bethink you "the friends so linked together" are
like-minded? No, it is all masquerade; and the motley is that same easy
conventionality by which we hope to escape undetected and unknown!

Our business now is not with the mass of this great assemblage; we are
only interested for two persons,--one of whom, a tall figure in a
black domino, leans against a pillar yonder, closely scrutinizing each
new-comer that enters, and eagerly glancing at the sleeve of every
yellow domino that passes.

He has been there from an early hour of the evening, and never left
it s