ter in my house to-night."

There was something in his manner of saying this and in the short
inquiring glance which at every opportunity he cast upon her bright
young face with its nameless charm of mingled appeal and reserve, that
astonished his wife.

"Miss Stuyvesant was in the carriage with Mrs. Fitzgerald," said that
lady with a certain dignity she knew well how to assume. "I am afraid if
it had not been for that circumstance we should not have enjoyed the
pleasure of her presence." And with the rare tact of which she was
certainly a mistress, as far as all social matters were concerned, she
left the aspiring magnate of Wall Street to converse with the daughter
of the man whom all New York bankers were expected to know, and hastened
to join a group of ladies discussing ceramics before a huge placque of
rarest _cloissone_.

Mr. Sylvester followed her with his eyes; he had never seen her look
more vivacious; had the hope of seeing a young face at their board
touched some secret chord in her nature as well as his? Was she more of
a woman than he imagined, and would she be, though in the most
superficial of ways, a mother to Paula? Flushed with the thought, he
turned back to the little lady at his side. She was gazing in an intent
and thoughtful way at an engraving of Dubufe's "Prodigal Son" that
adorned the wall above her head. There was something in her face that
made him ask:

"Is that a favorite picture of yours?"

She smiled and nodded her small and delicate head.

"Yes sir, it is indeed, but I was not looking at the picture so much as
at the face of that dark-haired girl that sits in the centre, with that
far-away expression in her eyes. Do you see what I mean? She is like
none of the rest. Her form is before us, but her heart and her interest
are in some distant clime or forsaken home to which the music murmured
at her side recalls her. She has a soul above her surroundings, that
girl; and her face is indescribably pathetic to me. In the recesses of
her being she carries a memory or a regret that separates her from the
world and makes certain moments of her life almost holy."

"You look deep," said Mr. Sylvester, gazing down upon the little lady's
face with strongly awakened interest. "You see more perhaps than the
painter intended."

"No, no; possibly more than the engraving expresses, but not more than
the artist intended. I saw the original once, when as you remember it
was on exhibition here. I wa