w."

The rascal could not resist this last mendacious opportunity, although
he was perfectly sincere in his renunciation, touched in his sympathy,
and there was even a film of moisture in his shifting eyes.

Phoebe was thrilled with the generosity of this noble being, who could
be unselfish even in his superior condition. She added softly:--

"And they say that the girl did not care for him at all, but was
actually going to run off with Pedro, when he stopped her and sent for
Mrs. Peyton."

To her surprise, Jim's face flushed violently.

"It's all a dod-blasted lie," he said, in a thick stage whisper. "It's
only the hogwash them Greasers and Pike County galoots ladle out to
each other around the stove in a county grocery. But," recalling himself
loftily, and with a tolerant wave of his be-diamonded hand, "wot kin
you expect from one of them cow counties? They ain't satisfied till they
drive every gentleman out of the darned gopher-holes they call their
'kentry.'"

In her admiration of what she believed to be a loyal outburst for his
friend, Phoebe overlooked the implied sneer at her provincial home. But
her father went on with a perfunctory, exasperating, dusty aridity:--

"That mebbee ez mebbee, Mr. Hooker, but the story down in our precinct
goes that she gave Mrs. Peyton the slip,--chucked up her situation as
adopted darter, and went off with a queer sort of a cirkiss woman,--one
of her own KIN, and I reckon one of her own KIND."

To this Mr. Hooker offered no further reply than a withering rebuke of
the waiter, a genteel abstraction, and a lofty change of subject. He
pressed upon them two tickets for the performance, of which he seemed to
have a number neatly clasped in an india-rubber band, and advised
them to come early. They would see him after the performance and sup
together. He must leave them now, as he had to be punctually at the
theatre, and if he lingered he should be pestered by interviewers. He
withdrew under a dazzling display of cuff and white handkerchief,
and with that inward swing of the arm and slight bowiness of the leg
generally recognized in his profession as the lounging exit of high
comedy.

The mingling of awe and an uneasy sense of changed relations which that
meeting with Jim had brought to Phoebe was not lessened when she entered
the theatre with her father that evening, and even Mr. Hopkins seemed to
share her feelings. The theatre was large, and brilliant in decoration,
the sea