seldom met him in society now.

By and by came whisper number two--a whisper more emphatic than number
one, but still untraceable to any tangible mouthpiece. This time the
whisper said that Van Twiller _was_ in love. But with whom? The list of
possible Mrs. Van Twillers was carefully examined by experienced hands,
and a check placed against a fine old Knickerbocker name here and
there, but nothing satisfactory arrived at. Then that same still small
voice of rumor but now with an easily detected staccato sharpness to
it, said that Van Twiller was in love--with an actress! Van Twiller,
whom it had taken all these years and all this waste of raw material in
the way of ancestors to bring to perfection--Ralph Van Twiller, the net
result and flower of his race, the descendant of Wouter, the son of
Mrs. Vanrensselaer Vanzandt Van Twiller--in love with an actress! That
was too ridiculous to be believed--and so everybody believed it.

Six or seven members of the club abruptly discovered in themselves an
unsuspected latent passion for the histrionic art. In squads of two or
three they stormed successively all the theatres in town--Booth's,
Wallack's, Daly's Fifth Avenue (not burned down then), and the Grand
Opera House. Even the shabby homes of the drama over in the Bowery,
where the Germanic Thespis has not taken out his naturalization papers,
underwent rigid exploration. But no clew was found to Van Twiller's
mysterious attachment. The _opera bouffe_, which promised the widest
field for investigation, produced absolutely nothing, not even a crop
of suspicions. One night, after several weeks of this, Delaney and I
fancied that we caught sight of Van Twiller in the private box of an
uptown theatre, where some thrilling trapeze performance was going on,
which we did not care to sit through; but we concluded afterward that
it was only somebody who looked like him. Delaney, by the way, was
unusually active in this search. I dare say he never quite forgave Van
Twiller for calling him Muslin Delaney. Ned is fond of ladies' society,
and that's a fact.

The Cimmerian darkness which surrounded Van Twiller's inamorata left us
free to indulge in the wildest conjectures. Whether she was
black-tressed Melpomene, with bowl and dagger, or Thalia, with the fair
hair and the laughing face, was only to be guessed at. It was popularly
conceded, however, that Van Twiller was on the point of forming a
dreadful _mesalliance_.

Up to this period