and was officially marked "D.H." on the book at
the gate, he concluded to see the balance of the performance.

He passed in. Florence was just indulging in that terrible war-dance of
jealousy which follows the supposed discovery of the fact that the wife
of Bill Williams has taken up with a Picaninny, and the laughter and
applause were uproarious. The Judge found some acquaintances in the
lobby, and chatted with them while he watched the piece and while
waiting for the next.

Finally another friend, a family acquaintance, came up the aisle, from
the orchestra-seats, probably on his way to those pleasant lower regions
in which refreshment to the inner man is dispensed. As he shook hands
with the Judge, he said:

"Ah, Judge, I did not know that you were here. I saw your daughter, just
now, down in the orchestra, but I am sure she did not come in with you."

"My daughter!" said the Judge, surprised, "I think you must be mistaken.
Mrs. Owen did not speak of coming to the theatre this evening."

"Oh," said the acquaintance, "Mrs. Owen is not here. I should have seen
her if she had been. Your daughter came in with a young man, and they
are sitting together down there in the second row from the front."

"You do not know the young man?" asked the Judge, on whom the compound
noun for some cause produced an unpleasant effect.

"No," answered the acquaintance, "I do not know him. He is a rather
good-looking young fellow, short, with brown curly hair, and a
moustache, and dressed in light-gray. No doubt you know him by the
description."

Judge Owen _did_ know him by the description, but too well! That short
good-looking young man with the curly hair, the moustache and the
light-gray clothes, was as certainly the man he had forbidden his house
and the company of his daughter, as his own name was Owen and his
dignity a judicial one!

Here was an outrage!--witness it ye fathers whose daughters do not
always obey your high behests. Here was a call for the exercise of the
highest qualities of authority!--bear witness to that, all you good
people who have at one time or another dragged your wives out of
churches because you did not like the ritual, or who have dragged them
_into_ churches because suitors armed with money-bags or aristocratic
names or political influence, stood within and beckoned! Here was a
necessity for proving what Judge Owen had only a day or two before so
loudly asserted--his ascendency in his own househol