ack silk, made with girlish simplicity which
admirably became her, and a wide, flexible brimmed hat with a single
heavy plume taken from Betty's own hat of the last winter. Cassandra
stood a long moment before the two gowns. She desired to don the silk,
but Betty had told her always to wear the blue in the morning, so at
last she obeyed her kind adviser.

While waiting with her baby in her arms for the hotel boy to call her
cab, she observed another lady, young and graceful, enter a cab, and a
maid following her wearing a pretty cap, and carrying a child. Eager,
for David's sake, to draw no adverse comment upon herself, she took note
of everything. Ought she then to arrive attended by a maid, carrying her
baby? But David would know she did not need one; bringing him his little
son in her own arms, what would he care for anything more? So the
address was given the cabman, and they were rattled away over the rough
paving, a long, lonely ride through the wonderful city--so many miles of
houses and splendid buildings, of gardens and monuments.

Strangely, the people of _Vanity Fair_ leaped out of the book she had
read, and walked the streets or dashed by her in cabs--albeit in modern
dress. The soldiers--the guardsmen--the liveried lackeys--the errand
boys--all were there, and the ladies in fine carriages. There were the
nursemaids--the babies--the beggars--the ragged urchins and the venders
of the street, with their raucous cries rending the air. Her brain
whirled, and a new feeling to which she had hitherto been blessedly a
stranger crept over her, a feeling of fear.

As the great two-story coaches and trams thundered by, she clasped her
baby closer, until he looked up in her face with round-eyed wonder and
put up his lip in pitiful protest. She soothed and comforted him until
her panic passed, and when, at last, they stopped before a great house
built in on either side by other houses, with wide steps of stone
descending directly upon the street, she had regained a measure of
composure. She was assured by the cabman, leaning respectfully down to
her with his cap in his hand, that this was "the 'ouse, ma'm," and
should he wait?

"Oh, yes. Wait," cried Cassandra. What if David were not there! And of
course, he might be out. Then they were swallowed up in the dark
interior. She was admitted to a hall that seemed to her empty and vast,
by a little old man in livery. For a moment, bewildered, she could
hardly understand w