ntervals Emeline dressed herself and her daughter as
elaborately as possible, and went out into the Mission to see her
parents. With the singular readiness to change the known discomfort for
the unknown, characteristic of their class, the various young members of
the family had all gone away now, and lonely old Mrs. Cox, a shrivelled
little shell of a woman at sixty-five, always had a warm welcome for her
oldest daughter and her beautiful grandchild. She would limp about her
bare, uninviting little rooms, complaining of her husband's increasing
meanness and of her own physical ills, while with gnarled, twisted old
hands she filled a "Rebecca" teapot of cheap brown glaze, or cut into a
fresh loaf of "milk bread."

"D'ye see George at all now, Emeline?"

"Not to speak to, Mom. But"--and Emeline would lay down the little
mirror in which she was studying her face--"but the Rosenthal children
say that there's a man who's _always_ hanging about the lower doorway, and
that once he gave Hannah----"

And so on and on. Mrs. Cox was readily convinced that George, repentant,
was unable to keep away from the neighbourhood of his one and only love.
Julia, dreaming over her thick cup of strong tea, granted only a polite,
faintly weary smile to her mother's romances. She knew how glad Emeline
would be to really believe even one tenth of these flattering
suspicions.

A few weeks after Julia's long day of events with Artheris, with Carter
Hazzard, and young Rosenthal, she chanced to awaken one Saturday morning
to a pleasant, undefined sensation that life was sweet. She thought of
Mr. Hazzard, whom she had seen twice since their first meeting, but not
alone again. And she reflected with satisfaction that she knew her part
of "The Amazons" perfectly, and so was ready for the first rehearsal
to-day. This led to a little dream of the leading lady failing to appear
on the great night, and of Julia herself in Lady Noel's part; of Julia
subsequently adored and envied by the entire cast; of Carter Hazzard----

Julia had made an engagement with Mark for to-day, but the rehearsal
plan must interfere. She wondered how she could send him word, and
finally decided to see him herself for a moment early in the afternoon.
Mark, originally employed as office boy, pure and simple, had now made
himself a general handy man, reference and filing clerk, in the big
piano house of Pomeroy and Parke. He had all the good traits of his
race, and some of the t