sits there looking out at the gay scene before her, like a spectre who is silently noting the uselessness, the folly, and the evanescence of it all.
"Why do such people come out at all?" asks George, shuddering. "Pah!—they spoil the look of everything. It can be no pleasure to them to take their aching old bones abroad; they only give the blues to every one who looks at them, and yet they come with the rest until death taps them the shoulder and takes them away."
"Poor souls! perhaps they like the excitement—who knows?"
"Mrs. Bareacres is smacking her lips over something," says George. "Another reputation demolished no doubt. Those old women are perfect emporiums of scandal and venom, out of which a story, redounding to the discredit of every one present, may be fished at a moment's notice!"
"I wonder what mine is," I say, laughing.
"Heaven grant they may never have a chance of making you the subject of their talk," says the young man, soberly—so soberly that I stare at him for a moment in surprise. He used not to be so grave and thoughtful, or think so seriously about people and things. His philosophy is touched with somewhat more of bitter than it was three years ago.
A fat man and a lean woman vacate their chairs, so George and I promptly sit down on them and look about us. Several promising flirtations are in full swing; several lines are being thrown out by dexterous maidens to entice into their nets certain comely fish; there is a buzz of conversation, a flutter of fans, above which rises, sweet and clear, the music of the band hidden in the trees away to the left. In the assemblage the female sex, as usual, preponderates largely, and, beholding the number of petticoats as set against the infrequency of the lavender and grey legs, I feel slightly snubbed and rather small for is it not an unpleasant re-
