The house of the hostess triumphs, and is corpulent of wealth and splendor.  To-morrow she will feed with the rich crumbs that fall from her table the starving poor.  And although she holds poor virtue in utter contempt, feeding the poor she regards a large score on the passport to a better world.  A great marble stairway winds its way upward at the further end of the hall and near it are two small balconies, one on each side, presenting barricades of millinery surmounted with the picturesque faces of some two dozen denizens, who keep up an incessant gabbling, interspersed here and there with jeers directed at Mr. Soloman.  “Who is he seeking to accommodate to-night?” they inquire, laughing merrily.

The house is full, the hostess has not space for one friend more; she commands the policemen to close doors.  An Alderman is the only exception to her fiat.  “You see,” she says, addressing herself to a courtly individual who has just saluted her with urbane deportment, “I must preserve the otium cum dignitate of my (did I get it right?) standing in society.  I don’t always get these Latin sayings right.  Our Congressmen don’t.  And, you see, like them, I ain’t a Latin scholar, and may be excused for any little slips.  Politics and larnin’ don’t get along well together.  Speaking of politics, I confess I rather belong to the Commander and Quabblebum school-I do!”

At this moment (a tuning of instruments is heard in the dancing-hall) the tall figure of the accommodation man is seen, in company of the venerable Judge, passing hurriedly into a room on the right of the winding stairs before described.  “Judge!” he exclaims, closing the door quickly after him, “you will be discovered and exposed.  I am not surprised at your passion for her, nor the means by which you seek to destroy the relations existing between her and George Mullholland.  It is an evidence of taste in you.  But she is proud to a fault, and, this I say in friendship, you so wounded her feelings, when you betrayed her to the St. Cecilia, that she has sworn to have revenge on you.  George Mullholland, too, has sworn to have your life.

“I tell you what it is, Judge, (the accommodation man assumes the air of a bank director,) I have just conceived-you will admit I have an inventive mind!—­a plot that will carry you clean through the whole affair.  Your ambition is divided between a passion for this charming creature and the good opinion of better society.  The resolution to retain the good opinion of society is doing noble battle in your heart; but it is the weaker vessel, and it always will be so with a man of your mould, inasmuch as such resolutions are backed up by the less fierce elements of our nature.  Put this down as an established principle.  Well, then, I will take upon myself the betrayal.  I will plead you ignorant of the charge, procure her forgiveness, and reconcile the matter with this Mullholland.  It’s worth an hundred or more, eh?”