In the right-hand procenium box sits, resplendent of jewels and laces, and surrounded by her many admirers, the beautiful and very fashionable Madame Montford, a woman of singularly regular features, and more than ordinary charms.  Opinion is somewhat divided on the early history of Madame Montford.  Some have it one thing, some another.  Society is sure to slander a woman of transcendent beauty and intellect.  There is nothing in the world more natural, especially when those charms attract fashionable admirers.  It is equally true, too, that if you would wipe out any little taint that may hang about the skirts of your character you must seek the panacea in a distant State, where, with the application of a little diplomacy you may become the much sought for wonder of a new atmosphere and new friends, as is the case with Madame Montford, who rebukes her New York neighbors of the Fifth Avenue (she has a princely mansion there), with the fact that in Charleston she is, whenever she visits it, the all-absorbing topic with fashionable society.  For four successive winters Madame Montford has honored the elite of Charleston with her presence.  The advent of her coming, too, has been duly heralded in the morning papers-to the infinite delight of the St. Cecilia Society, which never fails to distinguish her arrival with a ball.  And this ball is sure to be preceded with no end of delicately-perfumed cards, and other missives, as full of compliments as it is capable of cramming them.  There is, notwithstanding all these ovations in honor of her coming, a mystery hanging over her periodical visits, for the sharp-eyed persist that they have seen her disguised, and in suspicious places; making singular inquiries about a woman of the name of Mag Munday.  And these suspicions have given rise to whisperings, and these whisperings have crept into the ears of several very old and highly-respectable “first families,” which said families have suddenly dropped her acquaintance.  But what is more noticeable in the features of Madame Montford, is the striking similarity between them and Anna Bonard’s.  Her most fervent admirers have noticed it; while strangers have not failed to discover it, and to comment upon it.  And the girl who sits in the box with Mr. Snivel, so cautiously fortifying herself with the curtain, is none other than Anna.  Mr. Snivel has brought her here as an atonement for past injuries.

Just as the curtain is about to rise, Mr. McArthur, true to his word, may be seen toddling to the stage door, his treasure carefully tied up in a handkerchief.  He will deliver it to no one but the manager, and in spite of his other duties that functionary is compelled to receive it in person.  This done, the old man, to the merriment of certain wags who delight to speculate on his childlike credulity, takes a seat in the parquette, wipes clean his venerable spectacles, and placing them methodically over his eyes, forms a unique picture in the foreground of the audience.  McArthur, with