rative plenty of
them--stranger still. Lack of appetite was the chief dietary want now.
Nobody had any best clothes to put on in a world where everything was
for the best in the way of clothes. Except for the speckled Passover
cakes, there was hardly any external symptom of the sacred Festival.
While the Ghetto was turning itself inside out, the Kensington Terrace
was calm in the dignity of continuous cleanliness. Nor did Henry
Goldsmith himself go prowling about the house in quest of vagrant
crumbs. Mary O'Reilly attended to all that, and the Goldsmiths had
implicit confidence in her fidelity to the traditions of their faith.
Wherefore, the evening of the day before Passover, instead of being
devoted to frying fish and provisioning, was free for more secular
occupations; Esther, for example, had arranged to go to see the _debut_
of a new Hamlet with Addie. Addie had asked her to go, mentioned that
Raphael, who was taking her, had suggested that she should bring her
friend. For they had become great friends, had Addie and Esther, ever
since Esther had gone to take that cup of tea, with the chat that is
more essential than milk or sugar.

The girls met or wrote every week. Raphael, Esther never met nor heard
from directly. She found Addie a sweet, lovable girl, full of frank
simplicity and unquestioning piety. Though dazzlingly beautiful, she had
none of the coquetry which Esther, with a touch of jealousy, had been
accustomed to associate with beauty, and she had little of the petty
malice of girlish gossip. Esther summed her up as Raphael's heart
without his head. It was unfair, for Addie's own head was by no means
despicable. But Esther was not alone in taking eccentric opinions as the
touchstone of intellectual vigor. Anyhow, she was distinctly happier
since Addie had come into her life, and she admired her as a mountain
torrent might admire a crystal pool--half envying her happier
temperament.

The Goldsmiths were just finishing dinner, when the expected ring came.
To their surprise, the ringer was Sidney. He was shown into the
dining-room.

"Good evening, all," he said. "I've come as a substitute for Raphael."

Esther grew white. "Why, what has happened to him?" she asked.

"Nothing, I had a telegram to say he was unexpectedly detained in the
city, and asking me to take Addie and to call for you."

Esther turned from white to red. How rude of Raphael! How disappointing
not to meet him, after all! And did he t