To-night the carriages are trolling and rumbling to the great mansion
of the Wandrells on Prairie Avenue. The women are positive in their
exclamations of reunion, and this undoubted feminine joy exhilarates,
and entertains the men. The lights are brilliant, the music is far
away and clever, the flowers and decorations are novel.

If you look in the faces of the guests you shall see that the affair
cannot fail. Everybody has personally assured the success of the
evening.

Many times has this hospitable home opened to its companies of selected
men, and women. Often has the beautiful Esther Wandrell smiled upon
the young men--upon rich and poor alike. Why is she, at twenty-seven
years of age, rich, magnificent and unmarried?

Ask her mother, who married at fifteen. Ask the father, who for ten
years worried to think his only child might go away from him at any day.

"I tell you," says Dr. Tarpion, "Harpwood will get her, and get her
to-night. That is what this party is for. I've seen them together,
and I know what's in the air."

"Is that so?" says David Lockwin.

"Yes, it is so, and you know you don't like Harpwood any too well since
he got your primary in the Eleventh."

"I should say I didn't!" says Lockwin, half to himself.

At a distance, Esther Wandrell passes on Harpwood's arm.