it don't signify; it's empty as egg-shells, the whole of it."

That was the story of the prodigal son. Mrs. Walraven asked no
questions. She was a wise old woman; she took her son and was thankful.
It had happened late in October, this sudden arrival, and now, late in
November, the fatted calf was killed, and Mrs. Walraven's dear five
hundred friends bidden to the feast.

And they came. They had all heard the story of the widow's heir, so long
lost, and now, dark and mysterious as Count Lara, returned to lord it in
his ancestral halls. He was a very hero of romance--a wealthy hero,
too--and all the pretty man-traps on the avenue, baited with lace and
roses, silk and jewels, were coming to-night to angle for this dazzling
prize.

The long-silent drawing-rooms, shrouded for twenty years in holland and
darkness, were one blaze of light at last. Flowers bloomed everywhere;
musicians, up in a gilded gallery, discoursed heavenly music; there was
a conservatory where alabaster lamps made a silver moonlight in a
modern Garden of Eden; there was a supper-table spread and waiting, a
feast for the gods and Sybarites; and there was Mrs. Walraven, in black
velvet and point lace, upright and stately, despite her sixty years,
with a diamond star of fabulous price ablaze on her breast. And there by
her side, tall, and dark, and dignified, stood her only son, the
prodigal, the repentant, the wealthy Carl Walraven.

"Not handsome," said Miss Blanche Oleander, raising her glass, "but
eminently interesting. He looks like the hero of a sensation novel, or
a modern melodrama, or one of Lord Byron's poems. Does he dance, and will
he ask me, I wonder?"