hing rapidity. Now it was another opera party, now
a box at McVicker's, now a dinner, or more often a drive through
Lincoln Park behind Jadwin's trotters. He even had the Cresslers and
Laura over to his mission Sunday-school for the Easter festival, an
occasion of which Laura carried away a confused recollection of
enormous canvas mottoes, that looked more like campaign banners than
texts from the Scriptures, sheaves of calla lilies, imitation bells of
tin-foil, revival hymns vociferated with deafening vehemence from seven
hundred distended mouths, and through it all the disagreeable smell of
poverty, the odor of uncleanliness that mingled strangely with the
perfume of the lilies and the aromatic whiffs from the festoons of
evergreen.

Thus the first month of her new life had passed Laura did not trouble
herself to look very far into the future. She was too much amused with
her emancipation from the narrow horizon of her New England
environment. She did not concern herself about consequences. Things
would go on for themselves, and consequences develop without effort on
her part. She never asked herself whether or not she was in love with
any of the three men who strove for her favor. She was quite sure she
was not ready--yet--to be married. There was even something distasteful
in the idea of marriage. She liked Landry Court immensely; she found
the afternoons in Corthell's studio delightful; she loved the rides in
the park behind Jadwin's horses. She had no desire that any one of
these affairs should exclude the other two. She wished nothing to be
consummated. As for love, she never let slip an occasion to shock Aunt
Wess' by declaring:

"I love--nobody. I shall never marry."

Page, prim, with great parades of her ideas of "good form," declared
between her pursed lips that her sister was a flirt. But this was not
so. Laura never manoeuvered with her lovers, nor intrigued to keep from
any one of them knowledge of her companionship with the other two. So
upon such occasions as this, when all three found themselves face to
face, she remained unperturbed.

At last, towards half-past eight, Monsieur Gerardy arrived. All through
the winter amateur plays had been in great favor, and Gerardy had
become, in a sense, a fad. He was in great demand. Consequently, he
gave himself airs. His method was that of severity; he posed as a
task-master, relentless, never pleased, hustling the amateur actors
about without ceremony, scold