ce whom he was in the habit of meeting. Indeed, I think he was not
altogether displeased with the admiring glances which these humble women
threw after his handsome face and figure, conspicuous even in a
country of fine-looking men. While it is very probable that this wicked
vagabond, in the pride of his social isolation, would have been coldly
indifferent to the advances of a fine lady, a little girl who ran
admiringly by his side in a ragged dress had the power to call a faint
flush into his colorless cheek. He dismissed her at last, but not
until she had found out--what, sooner or later, her large-hearted and
discriminating sex inevitably did--that he was exceedingly free and
open-handed with his money, and also--what, perhaps, none other of her
sex ever did--that the bold black eyes of this fine gentleman were in
reality of a brownish and even tender gray.

There was a small garden before a white cottage in a side-street,
that attracted Mr. Oakhurst's attention. It was filled with roses,
heliotrope, and verbena,--flowers familiar enough to him in the
expensive and more portable form of bouquets, but, as it seemed to him
then, never before so notably lovely. Perhaps it was because the dew was
yet fresh upon them; perhaps it was because they were unplucked: but
Mr. Oakhurst admired them--not as a possible future tribute to the
fascinating and accomplished Miss Ethelinda, then performing at the
Varieties, for Mr. Oakhurst's especial benefit, as she had often assured
him; nor yet as a douceur to the inthralling Miss Montmorrissy, with
whom Mr. Oakhurst expected to sup that evening; but simply for himself,
and, mayhap, for the flowers' sake. Howbeit he passed on, and so out
into the open Plaza, where, finding a bench under a cottonwood-tree, he
first dusted the seat with his handkerchief, and then sat down.

It was a fine morning. The air was so still and calm, that a sigh from
the sycamores seemed like the deep-drawn breath of the just awakening
tree, and the faint rustle of its boughs as the outstretching of cramped
and reviving limbs. Far away the Sierras stood out against a sky so
remote as to be of no positive color,--so remote, that even the sun
despaired of ever reaching it, and so expended its strength recklessly
on the whole landscape, until it fairly glittered in a white and vivid
contrast. With a very rare impulse, Mr. Oakhurst took off his hat, and
half reclined on the bench, with his face to the sky. Certain