For a young bride had arrived at the hotel, wife of an invalid person; and in the good gossip after dinner, Mrs. Mancredo had chatted about herself (apparently) to this young bride, until she knew all the past history of the girl, and had a pretty clear forecast of her future history as well. Then she commenced with being very sorry for the pretty, ingenuous young thing, and more sorry for herself because of the years in which she was an unenviable wife, and still more sorry for herself in her present mature womanhood. So when she came down to supper she had her pretty round chin well up in the air, while her heavily leaded eyelashes drooped under the languor of her hard weeping. She had that strange sort of expectancy of something better, new, and more satisfactory at last, which sometimes follows on a new discovery of the great disproportion between human aspirations and the ordinary objects, which are palmed off upon them as satisfactory food. She glanced toward Reginald as she passed his table, and inwardly ejaculated “Horrid thing! Eternally eating, whenever he stops wine-bibbing and smoking long enough.” And then with a flutter and flow of drapery, she permitted the waiter to adjust the paraphernalia of the occasion, as with a flashing of finger-rings and twittering of the pendants in her ears, and heaving of the laces under the diamonds at her breast, she proceeded to practically assert the always conceded fact that she was a splendid-looking woman. Three or four newcomers recognized the fact, and the old habitués were as loyal as ever. She saw all that, while she read and reread the bill of fare, and while the patient John brushed off imaginary crumbs, and did many useless things to remind her he still lived, and lived but to serve. Then—“Oh, anything,” was her order. He had expected that would be all, but he was obliged to wait just the same for its utterance.