supping by that of the simple potentate, who had his meals
in one of the public rooms, with three gentlemen of his suite, in
sack-coats like himself, after the informal manner of the place.

Still another potentate, who happened that summer to be sojourning
abroad, in the interval of a successful rebellion, was at the opera
one night with some of his faithful followers. Burnamy had offered Mrs.
March, who supposed that he merely wanted her and her husband with
him, places in a box; but after she eagerly accepted, it seemed that he
wished her to advise him whether it would do to ask Miss Triscoe and her
father to join them.

"Why not?" she returned, with an arching of the eyebrows.

"Why," he said, "perhaps I had better make a clean breast of it."

"Perhaps you had," she said, and they both laughed, though he laughed
with a knot between his eyes.

"The fact is, you know, this isn't my treat, exactly. It's Mr.
Stoller's." At the surprise in her face he hurried on. "He's got back
his first letter in the paper, and he's so much pleased with the way he
reads in print, that he wants to celebrate."

"Yes," said Mrs. March, non-committally.

Burnamy laughed again. "But he's bashful, and he isn't sure that you
would all take it in the right way. He wants you as friends of mine; and
he hasn't quite the courage to ask you himself."

This seemed to Mrs. March so far from bad that she said: "That's very
nice of him. Then he's satisfied with--with your help? I'm glad of
that."

"Thank you. He's met the Triscoes, and he thought it would be pleasant
to you if they went, too."

"Oh, certainly."

"He thought," Burnamy went on, with the air of feeling his way, "that
we might all go to the opera, and then--then go for a little supper
afterwards at Schwarzkopf's."

He named the only place in Carlsbad where you can sup so late as ten
o'clock; as the opera begins at six, and is over at half past eight,
none but the wildest roisterers frequent the place.

"Oh!" said Mrs. March. "I don't know how a late supper would agree with
my husband's cure. I should have to ask him."

"We could make it very hygienic," Burnamy explained.

In repeating his invitation she blamed Burnamy's uncandor so much that
March took his part, as perhaps she intended, and said, "Oh, nonsense,"
and that he should like to go in for the whole thing; and General
Triscoe accepted as promptly for himself and his daughter. That made six
people, Burnamy counted