mused,
half-bewildered expression. The banquet table, despoiled of its
beauty, the half-emptied wine glasses, the broken bits of cake,
crumbled by beauty's fair fingers; the odor of dying roses, smothered
in their bloom, mingled with the scent of the undrunk wine; all told
the story of revelry and its inevitable destiny.

The stranger crossed the room to the pillaged sideboard, and with the
air of a man thoroughly at home, lifted a decanter and poured a
tumbler full of wine, lifted it carelessly to his lips, drained it,
and with the emptied vessel still in his hand turned to meet the
master of the house.

He still wore the finery in which he had decked himself for the ball.
In one hand he carried his pipe, over which he had been dozing with
Rachel. But the eye was alive now; the quick, eagle eye. The ball had
become a thing of the past. And as he stood for one brief moment in
the doorway, himself, in his gala dress, seemed but another
illustration of that indomitable grimness which hangs about a forsaken
banquet room. At that moment the stranger lifted his face. It was a
face stamped with the cunning of a fox, the courage of a lion, the
simplicity of a child, the ambition of a god.

The master met the cool, fixed eye, and into his own leaped the
smothered fire of outraged dignity. He lifted his hand, as if to
curse.

"Do you know, sir, that the world is branding you a traitor? And that
Felix Grundy refused to drink your health in my house to-night?"

A sneer flitted across the handsome features, but the low, rich voice
only said, "_Let him_."

It was the voice of Aaron Burr.

EDITORIAL NOTES.

THE ERA OF WOMAN.

The constantly broadening sphere of woman's influence is to me the
most hopeful and important sign of our times. The era of woman has
dawned, bearing the unmistakable prophecy of a far higher civilization
than humanity has ever known. It is an incontestable fact that woman
is ethically, infinitely superior to man; her moral perceptions are
firmer and stronger, her unselfishness far greater, her spiritual
nature deeper and richer than that of her brothers. She is to-day
foremost in the great social, philanthropic, humanitarian, and ethical
reforms, in which selfishness has no place. In her widening influence,
growing liberty, and freedom, I see impearled a prophecy of an
altruistic era--a civilization triumphant--rising against to-morrow's
purpling dawn.

In the fields of intellectual and s