“Then, finally, I put the question to him, ‘Shall you acknowledge her?’

“And now, ladies and gentlemen, friends and companions, I ask you, what should he have done?”

There was something in Mr. Ryder’s voice that stirred the hearts of those who sat around him.  It suggested more than mere sympathy with an imaginary situation; it seemed rather in the nature of a personal appeal.  It was observed, too, that his look rested more especially upon Mrs. Dixon, with a mingled expression of renunciation and inquiry.

She had listened, with parted lips and streaming eyes.  She was the first to speak:  “He should have acknowledged her.”

“Yes,” they all echoed, “he should have acknowledged her.”

“My friends and companions,” responded Mr. Ryder, “I thank you, one and all.  It is the answer I expected, for I knew your hearts.”

He turned and walked toward the closed door of an adjoining room, while every eye followed him in wondering curiosity.  He came back in a moment, leading by the hand his visitor of the afternoon, who stood startled and trembling at the sudden plunge into this scene of brilliant gayety.  She was neatly dressed in gray, and wore the white cap of an elderly woman.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “this is the woman, and I am the man, whose story I have told you.  Permit me to introduce to you the wife of my youth.”

Her Virginia Mammy

I

The pianist had struck up a lively two-step, and soon the floor was covered with couples, each turning on its own axis, and all revolving around a common centre, in obedience perhaps to the same law of motion that governs the planetary systems.  The dancing-hall was a long room, with a waxed floor that glistened with the reflection of the lights from the chandeliers.  The walls were hung in paper of blue and white, above a varnished hard wood wainscoting; the monotony of surface being broken by numerous windows draped with curtains of dotted muslin, and by occasional engravings and colored pictures representing the dances of various nations, judiciously selected.  The rows of chairs along the two sides of the room were left unoccupied by the time the music was well under way, for the pianist, a tall colored woman with long fingers and a muscular wrist, played with a verve and a swing that set the feet of the listeners involuntarily in motion.

The dance was sure to occupy the class for a quarter of an hour at least, and the little dancing-mistress took the opportunity to slip away to her own sitting-room, which was on the same floor of the block, for a few minutes of rest.  Her day had been a hard one.  There had been a matinee at two o’clock, a children’s class at four, and at eight o’clock the class now on the floor had assembled.