beauty it was not necessary to insist upon that; he had the distinction of slender youth; and she liked to think that no Highhote there was of a more patrician presence than this yet unprinted contributor to ‘Every Other Week’.  He and Stoller seemed on perfect terms; or else in his joy he was able to hide the uneasiness which she had fancied in him from the first time she saw them together, and which had never been quite absent from his manner in Stoller’s presence.  Her husband always denied that it existed, or if it did that it was anything but Burnamy’s effort to get on common ground with an inferior whom fortune had put over him.

The young fellow talked with Stoller, and tried to bring him into the range of the general conversation.  He leaned over the ladies, from time to time, and pointed out the notables whom he saw in the house; she was glad, for his sake, that he did not lean less over her than over Miss Triscoe.  He explained certain military figures in the boxes opposite, and certain ladies of rank who did not look their rank; Miss Triscoe, to Mrs. March’s thinking, looked their united ranks, and more; her dress was very simple, but of a touch which saved it from being insipidly girlish; her beauty was dazzling.

“Do you see that old fellow in the corner chair just behind the orchestra?” asked Burnamy.  “He’s ninety-six years old, and he comes to the theatre every night, and falls asleep as soon as the curtain rises, and sleeps through till the end of the act.”

“How dear!” said the girl, leaning forward to fix the nonagenarian with her glasses, while many other glasses converged upon her.  “Oh, wouldn’t you like to know him, Mr. March?”

“I should consider it a liberal education.  They have brought these things to a perfect system in Europe.  There is nothing to make life pass smoothly like inflexible constancy to an entirely simple custom.  My dear,” he added to his wife, “I wish we’d seen this sage before.  He’d have helped us through a good many hours of unintelligible comedy.  I’m always coming as Burnamy’s guest, after this.”

The young fellow swelled with pleasure in his triumph, and casting an eye about the theatre to cap it, he caught sight of that other potentate.  He whispered joyfully, “Ah!  We’ve got two kings here to-night,” and he indicated in a box of their tier just across from that where the King of Servia sat, the well-known face of the King of New York.

“He isn’t bad-looking,” said March, handing his glass to General Triscoe.  “I’ve not seen many kings in exile; a matter of a few Carlist princes and ex-sovereign dukes, and the good Henry V. of France, once, when I was staying a month in Venice; but I don’t think they any of them looked the part better.  I suppose he has his dream of recurring power like the rest.”

“Dream!” said General Triscoe with the glass at his eyes.  “He’s dead sure of it.”

“Oh, you don’t really mean that!”