. She was also afflicted
with a high color, and a chronic eruption of diamonds. Her husband
had an eye for them, having begun life as a jeweller's apprentice, and
having developed sufficient sharpness of vision in other directions to
become a millionnaire, and a Congressman, and to let his wife do as she
pleased.

What goes forth from the lips may vary in dialect, but wine and oysters
speak the universal language. The supper-table brought our party
together, and they compared notes.

"Parties are very confusing," philosophized Hope,--"especially when
waiters and partners dress so much alike. Just now I saw an ill-looking
man elbowing his way up to Mrs. Meredith, and I thought he was bringing
her something on a plate. Instead of that, it was his hand he held out,
and she put hers into it; and I was told that he was one of the leaders
of society. There are very few gentlemen here whom I could positively
tell from the waiters by their faces, and yet Harry says the fast set
are not here."

"Talk of the angels!" said Philip. "There come the Inglesides."

Through the door of the supper-room they saw entering the drawing-room
one of those pretty, fair-haired women who grow older up to twenty-five
and then remain unchanged till sixty. She was dressed in the loveliest
pale blue silk, very low in the neck, and she seemed to smile on all
with her white teeth and her white shoulders. This was Mrs. Ingleside.
With her came her daughter Blanche, a pretty blonde, whose bearing
seemed at first as innocent and pastoral as her name. Her dress was of
spotless white, what there was of it; and her skin was so snowy, you
could hardly tell where the dress ended. Her complexion was exquisite,
her eyes of the softest blue; at twenty-three she did not look more
than seventeen; and yet there was such a contrast between these virginal
traits, and the worn, faithless, hopeless expression, that she looked,
as Philip said, like a depraved lamb. Does it show the higher nature
of woman, that, while "fast young men" are content to look like
well-dressed stable boys and billiard-markers, one may observe that
girls of the corresponding type are apt to addict themselves to white
and rosebuds, and pose themselves for falling angels?

Mrs. Ingleside was a stray widow (from New Orleans via Paris), into
whose antecedents it was best not to inquire too closely. After many
ups and downs, she was at present up. It was difficult to state with
certainty what