A Hazard of New Fortunes, Part Third

d with him for more personal reasons than she had implied; it flattered him that she should have resented what he told her of the Dryfooses. She had scolded him

he Leightons; the intangible obligations of mutual kindness which hold some men so fast, hung loosely upon him; it would not have hurt him to break from them altogether; but when he recognized them at last, he found that it strengthened them indefinitely to have Alma ignore them so completely. If she had been sentimental, or softly reproachful, that would have been the end; he could not have stood it; he would have had to drop her. But when she met him on his own ground, and obliged him to be sentimental, the game was in her hands. Beaton laughed, now, when he thought of that, and he said to himself that the girl had grown immensely since she had come to New

ts prosperity when he met Ma

t was a literary house, primarily, with artistic qualifications, and the frequenters of it were mostly authors and artists; Wetmore, who was always trying to fit everything with a phrase, said it was the unfrequenters who were fashionable. There was great ease there, and simplicity; and if there was not distinction, it was not for want of distinguished people, but because there seems to be some solvent in New York life that reduces all men to a common level, th

but he said their assemblage in such quantity alone denied the salon; there was too much of a good thing. The French word implied a long evening of general talk among the guests, crowned with a little chicken at supper, ending at cock-crow. Here was tea, with milk or with lemon-baths of it and claret-cup for the hardier spirits throughout the evening. It was very nice, very pleasant, but it was not the little chicken-not the salon. In fact,

"I don't believe that the literary men and the artists would like a salon that descended to th

ng swell in New York," said

butter in one hand and a cup of tea in the other. Large and

g about salons,

tmore, breathing thickly from the anxiety of ge

of a woman who couldn't be interested in any of the arts because she was socially and traditi

in everything else. When we do have an aristocracy, it will be an aristocracy that will go ahead of anything the world has ever seen. Why don't somebody make a beginning, and go in openly for an ancestry, and a l

. Beaton," said the girl, with

ring his tea, "has Beato

yet, and I doubt if he has any caste feeling. I fancy his family believe themselves victims of it. They

they're all ready for company, too: go

," said

e socially destitute as well as the financially? Just think of a family like that, without a frie

e works, as it always is, but she was really active in that way, under the vague obligation, which we now all feel, to be helpful. She was of

swered, and Beaton felt obscurely flattered by

e: "They have me becau

s financial backer in

you rather astonished, Miss Vance, to see what a pe

you feel as if you did have a country, after all. It's as c

like you to. Beaton, you haven't come up to that cover of your first number, since. That was the design

you great hopes of

in his development, just remember your old friends, will you? You know, Miss Vance, those new fellows have their regular stages. They never know what to do with their money, but they find out that people buy pictures, at one point. They shut your things up in their houses where nobody comes, and after

stinguished stranger. If it was Arcadia rather than Bohemia, still she felt her quality of distinguished stranger. The flattery of it touched her fancy, and not her vanity; she had very little vanity. Beaton's devotion made the same sort of appeal; it was not so much that she liked him as she liked being the object of his admiration. She was a girl of genuine sympathies, intellectual rather than sentimental. In fact, she was an intellectual person, whom qualities of the heart saved from being disagreeable

the comers and goers left her alone with him again, "t

?" Beaton echoed. "

there with my aun

pride with which Alma had refrained from ever mentioning the fact to him,

. We do all kinds of things, and help all kinds of people in some ways, but we

to make their way among you," said Beaton

e defend ourselves by trying to believe that they must have friends of their own, or that they would think us patroniz

y'd be only too happy to have you come. But you wouldn'

said the girl, bravely, "and then we

any," said Beaton. "The moth

unka

ethics, and its quaint ceremonial of foot-washing; he made something picturesque of that. "The father is a Mammon-worshi

despair-after I've co

e use you as a 'point

hem, perhaps I'd better make a confession. I left

en we have a commo

ean the b

cidedly. Which

all the rage,' as the youngest says. Perhaps you ca

the possible encounter between Margaret Vance, with her intellectual elegance, her eager sympathies and generous ideals, and those girls with their rude past, their false and distorted perspective, their sordid and hungry sel

iss Vance said she must go, too, and she was about to ri

ricted to the art department. We literary fellows think that arm of the service gets too much of the

bout your favorite Boston. He

ance. "I can't imagine anybod

o her. "He came to New York because he couldn't help it-like the res

ght be drawn from such conclusions; she rather prided herself upon despising them; and she gave herself to the pleasure of being talked to as if she were of March's own age. In the glow of her sympathetic beauty and elegance he talked his best, and tried to amuse her with his jokes, which he had the art of tingeing wit

she seemed very unspoiled for a person who must have been so much spoiled. They tried to analyze her charm, and they succeeded in formulating it as a combination of intellectual fashionableness and worldly innocence. "I think," said Mrs. March, "that city girls, brought up as she must have been, are often the mo

re as Miss Vance," said March

girl's voice called out: "Run, run, Jen! The copper is after you." A woman's figure rushe

that's part

broke with a sigh. "Can that poor wretch and the radiant girl we left yonder real