Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2

it is a sin, were of the gentler sex, and could by no chance be a masculine peccadillo. So far as my observation goes, me

s Samuel Pepys, Esq., Secretary to the Admiralty in the reigns of those fortunate gentlemen Cha

you may be sure that they are discussing Tom's engagement, or Dick's extravagance, or Harry's hopeless passion for the younger Miss Fleurdelys. It is here old Tippleton gets execrated for that everlasting bon mot of his which was quite a success at dinner-parties forty years ago; it is here the belle of the season passes under the scalpels of merciless

terdam, as it was then; his ancestors have always been burgomasters or admirals or generals, and his mother is the Mrs. Vanrensselaer Vanzandt Van Twiller whose magnificent place will be pointed out to you on the right bank of the Hudson as you pass up the historic river toward Idlewild. Ralph is about twenty-five years old. Birth made him a gentleman, and

ng his neckscarf through a ring, so it became all at once the fashion, without any preconcerted agreement, for everybody to speak of Van Twiller as a man in some way under a cloud. But what the cloud was, and how he got under it, and why he did not get away from it, were points that lifted themselves into the realm of pure conje

Delaney, laughing. "I reme

I protest against any al

over Van Twiller. Now and then he would play a game of billiards with De Peyster or Haseltine, or stop to chat a moment in the vestibule with old Duane; but he was an altered man. When at the club, he was usually to be found in the small smok

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 t

ot taken out his naturalization papers, underwent rigid exploration. But no clew was found to Van Twiller's mysterious attachment. The opéra 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

er she was black-tressed Melpomene, with bowl and dagger, or Thalia, with the fair hair and the laughing face, was only t

entral Park, or at the houses he generally frequented. His chambers-and mighty comfortable chambers they were-on Thirty-fourth Street

tion took place one ni

s Van T

een Van

ecome of Va

read-with a solemnity that betrayed youn

esidence of the bride's uncle, Montague Capulet, Esq., Miss Adrienn

pended," murmu

ing the leaves of a magazine at the other end of the table,

we a

simply gone

he

d homestead o

year for a fellow to

isit his mother,"

Febr

statute in force prohibiting a man from visi

leasure of communing with Nature with a co

he club, but he either was not at liberty or did not think it worth while to relieve our curiosity. In the course of a week or two it was reported that Van Twiller was goin