“Papa is well enough, Miriam; you only imagine these things.  At fifty, you know, most men begin to break a little; then they rally again and look almost as well as ever in a few years, up to sixty or seventy.  Look at Mr. Lodore!  He looked older when we first knew him than he does now; and so did Dr. Pemberton.”

“That is because they have both filled out and grown more florid and healthy; but papa is withering away, Evelyn; shrinking day by day—­his very step has changed recently.  Oh, I hope, I hope I may be deceived!” And I covered my face with my hands, praying aloud, as I did sometimes irresistibly when greatly excited.  “God grant, God grant us his precious life!” I murmured.  “Spare him to his children!”

“Amen!” said Evelyn Erle, solemnly.

A few evenings after this conversation I went to see and hear the opera of “Masaniello,” then all the rage, and at the zenith of its popularity, with Mrs. Stanbury, Laura, and George Gaston—­Norman had been recently placed in the navy and he was absent now, and Mr. Gerald Stanbury obstinately refused to accompany us to that “monkey-and-parrot show,” as he deliberately dubbed the Italian opera.

“When men and women who are in love or grief, or who are telling each other the news, or secrets, stop to set their words to music, and roar and howl in each other’s ears, the world will be mad, and the opera natural,” he said.  “I will not lend my countenance before them to such a villainous travesty.”

As “Masaniello” had nearly had its run, and Evelyn was disinclined to see it again, having attended during the winter about twenty representations of this great musical spectacle, I was fain to go with our neighbors and their very youthful escort, or forego my opera.

As we entered the crowded lobby, Laura and I walked together behind George Gaston and Mrs. Stanbury, dropping later into Indian file as the crowd increased, in which order I was the last.  I wore a rich India shawl, that had been my mother’s, caught by a cameo clasp across the bosom.  Suddenly I felt the pin wrenched away and the shawl torn from my shoulders.  In another moment there was a cry—­a scuffle—­a fall—­and a prostrate form was borne away between two policemen, while a gentleman, with his cravat hanging loose and his hair in wild confusion, came toward me eagerly, extending the shawl and clasp.

“These are yours, I believe, young lady,” he remarked, breathlessly, throwing the shawl about my shoulders as he spoke, and laying the broken clasp in my hand.  “I am happy to restore them to you.”

The whole transaction had been so sudden and so public, that there had been neither time nor room for trepidation on my part.  My own party, pressing steadily on, had not yet missed me, so that, even in that moment of excitement, I surveyed my champion with an eye capable of future recognition.

“Thank you,” I said.  “I hope you are not hurt in my service?”