Night came, all stars. The old St. Charles Theatre filled to overflowing¹ with the city's best, the hours melted away while Maggie Mitchell played Fanchon, and now, in the bright gas-light of the narrow thoroughfare, here were Adolphe and Hilary helping² their three ladies into a carriage. All about them the feasted audience was pouring forth³ into the mild February night.

The smallest of the three women was aged⁴. That the other two were young and beautiful we know already. At eighteen the old lady, the Bohemian-glass one, had been one of those royalist refugees of the French Revolution whose butterfly endeavors to colonize⁵ in Alabama and become bees make so pathetic a chapter in history. When one knew that, he could hardly resent her being heavily enamelled. Irby pressed into the coach after the three and shut the door, Kincaid uncovered, and the carriage sped off.

Hilary turned, glanced easily over the heads of the throng⁶, and espied⁷ Greenleaf beckoning⁸ with a slender cane⁹. Together they crossed the way and entered the office of a public stable.

"Our nags¹⁰ again," said Kincaid to one of a seated group, and passed into a room beyond. Thence he re-issued with his dress modified for the saddle, and the two friends awaited their mounts under an arch. "Dost perceive, Frederic," said the facetious¹¹ Hilary, "yon modestly arrayed pair of palpable gents hieing hitherward yet pretending not to

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