e seriously interfered with
by the music on the stage."

"But the music, the scenery, were never before so good," I replied to
these cynical observations.

"That is true. And the social side has risen with it. Do you know what
an impudent thing the managers did the other night in protesting against
the raising of the lights by which the house was made brilliant and the
cheap illusions of the stage were destroyed? They wanted to make the
house positively gloomy for the sake of a little artificial moonlight on
the painted towers and the canvas lakes."

As the world goes, the scene was brilliant, of course with republican
simplicity. The imagination was helped by no titled names any more than
the eye was by the insignia of rank, but there was a certain glow of
feeling, as the glass swept the circle, to know that there were ten
millions in this box, and twenty in the next, and fifty in the next,
attested well enough by the flash of jewels and the splendor of attire,
and one might indulge a genuine pride in the prosperity of the republic.
As for beauty, the world, surely, in this later time, had flowered
here--flowered with something of Aspasia's grace and something of the
haughty coldness of Agrippina. And yet it was American. Here and there
in the boxes was a thoroughbred portrait by Copley--the long shapely
neck, the sloping shoulders, the drooping eyelids, even to the gown in
which the great-grandmother danced with the French officers.

"Who is that lovely creature?" asked Margaret, indicating a box
opposite.

I did not know. There were two ladies, and behind them I had no
difficulty in making out Henderson and--Margaret evidently had not seen
him Mr. Lyon. Almost at the same moment Henderson recognized me, and
signaled for me to come to his box. As I rose to do so, Mrs. Morgan
exclaimed: "Why, there is Mr. Lyon! Do tell him we are here." I saw
Margaret's color rise, but she did not speak.

I was presented to Mrs. Eschelle and her daughter; in the latter I
recognized the beauty who had flashed by us in the Park. The elder lady
inclined to stoutness, and her too youthful apparel could not mislead
one as to the length of her pilgrimage in this world, nor soften the
hard lines of her worldly face-lines acquired, one could see, by a
social struggle, and not drawn there by an innate patrician insolence.

"We are glad to see a friend of Mr. Henderson's," she said, "and of Mr.
Lyon's also. Mr. Lyon has told us much of y