"Oh! thank you a thousand times," she said. "I _knew_ you were a gentleman at the first word to those cowards; but I never dreamed you were Mr. Van Morris. I've heard sister speak of you _so_ often!" "_Your_ sister?" Van stared at the cheaply-clad night wanderer, as though _he_ had had too much Regent's punch. "Yes, sister Rose--Rose Wood," she said, with the confidence of acquaintance. "I'm her sister, you know--Blanche." "Blanche? Your name is Blanche? I cannot tell you how happy I am to have chanced along just now, Miss Wood;" and Van bared his head in the cutting night wind to the blanket-shawled girl in the night-liner, as he would not have done at high noon to a duchess in her chariot. "But I'm wasting your time from your mother; so good-morning; and may your Christmas be happier than its eve." "Good-by! And oh, _how_ I thank you!" the girl said, again extending her hand over the cab door. "I'll tell Rose, and _she_ shall thank you, better than I can!" "Good-night! But don't trouble _her_," Van said, releasing the girl's hand. "One minute, Murphy," he added aside to the driver; "here's your Christmas-gift!" A bright gold piece glinted in the dirty fur glove, in which Dennis Murphy looked to find a shilling under the next gas-lamp. "Blanche! and the same golden hair, too!" Van muttered to himself, as the cab rocked and ricketted down the street. "Well, I suppose that is what the poet means by 'the magic of a name'!" and he suddenly recalled that he was still standing bareheaded in the blast. "And Rose Wood's sister looks like that! Well, verily one half the world does _not_ know how the other half lives!" Then he turned and strode rapidly homeward; pulling hard, as he thought many strange thoughts, on the dead cigar between his lips. Once in his own parlor, Van Morris walked straight to the mirror over the mantel, and looked long and steadily at himself. Then he tossed Mr. Allmand's half-smoked cigar contemptuously into the grate, lit one he selected carefully from the carved stand near, and threw himself into a smoking-chair before the ruddy glow of coals. "I must be getting old," he soliloquized. "I didn't use to get bored so easily by these things. Either balls are not what they were, or _I_ am not. Now, 'there's no place like home!' Not much of a box to call home, either!" And he glanced round the really elegant apartment in half-disgust. "There's _something_ lacking! Andy's the best fellow in the world, but he's so wanting in order. Poor old boy! Wonder if he _will_ drink anything more? I surely must blow him up to-morrow morning. How deucedly sharp _she_ is!" and he smiled to himself. "She saw through Rose Wood's game at a glance. Wonder if she saw through _me_?"