incings at allusions
to death, and converse on eternal things banished as if it were the
smell of cabbage. So looked the gay world, at least, to Dr. Sevier.

He saw more of it than had been his wont for many seasons. The two
young-lady cousins whom he had brought and installed in his home
thirsted for that gorgeous, nocturnal moth life in which no thirst is
truly slaked, and dragged him with them into the iridescent, gas-lighted
spider-web of society.

"Now, you know you like it!" they said.

"A little of it, yes. But I don't see how you can like it, who virtually
live in it and upon it. Why, I would as soon try to live upon cake and
candy!"

"Well, we can live very nicely upon cake and candy," retorted they.

"Why, girls, it's no more life than spice is food. What lofty
motive--what earnest, worthy object"--

But they drowned his homily in a carol, and ran away arm in arm to dress
for another ball. One of them stopped in the door with an air of mock
bravado:--

"What do we care for lofty motives or worthy objects?"

A smile escaped from him as she vanished. His condemnation was flavored
with charity. "It's their mating season," he silently thought, and, not
knowing he did it, sighed.

"There come Dr. Sevier and his two pretty cousins," was the ball-room
whisper. "Beautiful girls--rich widower without children--great catch!
_Passe_, how? Well, maybe so; not as much as he makes himself out,
though." "_Passe_, yes," said a merciless belle to a blade of her own
years; "a man of strong sense is _passe_ at any age." Sister Jane's name
was mentioned in the same connection, but that illusion quickly passed.
The cousins denied indignantly that he had any matrimonial intention.
Somebody dissipated the rumor by a syllogism: "A man hunting a second
wife always looks like a fool; the Doctor doesn't look a bit like a
fool, ergo"--

He grew very weary of the giddy rout, standing in it like a rock in a
whirlpool. He did rejoice in the Carnival, but only because it was the
end.

"Pretty? yes, as pretty as a bonfire," he said. "I can't enjoy much
fiddling while Rome is burning."

"But Rome isn't always burning," said the cousins.

"Yes, it is! Yes, it is!"

The wickeder of the two cousins breathed a penitential sigh, dropped her
bare, jewelled arms out of her cloak, and said:--

"Now tell us once more about Mary Richling." He had bored them to death
with Mary.

Lent was a relief to all three. One day, as the Doctor