this time Fred was beginning to feel sorry for the driver. Miss
Beers, however, was compassionless. After a few more turns, Fred
suggested tea at the Casino. He was very cold himself, and remembering
the shining silk hose and pumps, he wondered that the girl was not
frozen. As they got out of the hansom, he slipped the driver a bill and
told him to have something hot while he waited.

At the tea-table, in a snug glass enclosure, with the steam sputtering
in the pipes beside them and a brilliant winter sunset without, they
developed their plan. Miss Beers had with her plenty of money, destined
for tradesmen, which she was quite willing to divert into other
channels--the first excitement of buying a trousseau had worn off,
anyway. It was very much like any other shopping. Fred had his allowance
and a few hundred he had won on the game. She would meet him to-morrow
morning at the Jersey ferry. They could take one of the west-bound
Pennsylvania trains and go--anywhere, some place where the laws weren't
too fussy.--Fred had not even thought about the laws!--It would be all
right with her father; he knew Fred's family.

Now that they were engaged, she thought she would like to drive a little
more. They were jerked about in the cab for another hour through the
deserted Park. Miss Beers, having removed her hat, reclined upon Fred's
shoulder.

The next morning they left Jersey City by the latest fast train out.
They had some misadventures, crossed several States before they found a
justice obliging enough to marry two persons whose names automatically
instigated inquiry. The bride's family were rather pleased with her
originality; besides, any one of the Ottenburg boys was clearly a better
match than young Brisbane. With Otto Ottenburg, however, the affair went
down hard, and to his wife, the once proud Katarina Furst, such a
disappointment was almost unbearable. Her sons had always been clay in
her hands, and now the GELIEBTER SOHN had escaped her.

Beers, the packer, gave his daughter a house in St. Louis, and Fred went
into his father's business. At the end of a year, he was mutely
appealing to his mother for sympathy. At the end of two, he was drinking
and in open rebellion. He had learned to detest his wife. Her
wastefulness and cruelty revolted him. The ignorance and the fatuous
conceit which lay behind her grimacing mask of slang and ridicule
humiliated him so deeply that he became absolutely reckless. Her grace
was