little too prompt, and that crushing disaster might still be
impending. He had said to himself, "Let her and all of them make the
most of this evening. It may be the last of the kind that they will
enjoy."

The spacious parlors filled rapidly. If lavish expenditure and a large
brilliant attendance could insure their enjoyment, it was not wanting.
Flowers in fanciful baskets on the tables and in great banks on the
mantels and in the fireplaces deservedly attracted much attention and
praise, though the sum expended on their transient beauty was
appalling. Their delicious fragrance mingling with perfumes of
artificial origin suggested a like intermingling of the more delicate,
subtile, but genuine manifestations of character, and the graces of
mind and manner borrowed for the occasion.

The scene was very brilliant. There were marvellous toilets--dresses
not beginning as promptly as they should, perhaps, but seemingly
seeking to make up for this deficiency by elegance and costliness,
having once commenced. There was no economy in the train, if there had
been in the waist. Therefore gleaming shoulders, glittering diamonds,
the soft radiance of pearls, the sheen of gold, and lustrous eyes
aglow with excitement, and later in the evening, with wine, gave a
general phosphorescent effect to the parlors that Mrs. Allen
recognized, from long experience, as the sparkling crown of success.
So much elegance on the part of the ladies present would make the
party the gem of the season, and the gentlemen in dark dress made a
good black enamel setting.

There was a confused rustle of silks and a hum of voices, and now and
then a silvery laugh would ring out above these like the trill of a