s that bade the daughter not return! No wonder
Marguerite's friend had divined her feelings, and drawn her out to the
cool retreat under the shadow of the veranda lanterns.

A gentleman joined them, who had "just come," he said. Marguerite's
companion and he were old friends. Neither he nor Marguerite heard
each other's name, nor could see each other's face more than dimly. He
was old enough to be twitted for bachelorhood, and to lay the blame
upon an outdoor and out-of-town profession. Such words drew
Marguerite's silent but close attention.

The talk turned easily from this to the ease with which the fair sex,
as compared with the other, takes on the graces of the drawing-room.
"Especially," the two older ones agreed, "if the previous lack is due
merely to outward circumstances." But Marguerite was still. Here was a
new thought. One who attained all those graces and love's prize also
might at last, for love's sake, have to count them but dross, or carry
them into retirement, the only trophies of abandoned triumphs. While
she thought, the conversation went on.

"Yes," said her friend, replying to the bachelor, "we acquire
drawing-room graces more easily; but why? Because most of us think we
must. A man may find success in one direction or another; but a woman
has got to be a social success, or she's a complete failure. She can't
snap her fingers at the drawing-room."

"Ah!" exclaimed Marguerite, "she can if she want!" She felt the
strength to rise that moment and go back to Opelousas, if only--and
did not see, until her companions laughed straight at her, that the
lady had spoken in jest.

"Still," said the bachelor, "the drawing-room is woman's
element--realm--rather than man's, whatever the reasons may be. I had
a young man with me last winter"--

"I knew it!" thought Marguerite.

"--until lately, in fact; he's here in town now,--whom I have tried
once or twice to decoy into company in a small experimental way. It's
harder than putting a horse into a ship. He seems not to know what
social interchange is for."

"Thinks it's for intellectual profit and pleasure," interrupted the
ironical lady.

"No, he just doesn't see the use or fun of it. And yet, really, that's
his only deficiency. True, he listens better than he talks--overdoes
it; but when a chap has youth, intelligence, native refinement,
integrity, and good looks, as far above the mean level as many of our
society fellows are below it, it seems to me