"It can't be possible that you have found anybody in that out-of-the-way locality to feel particularly interested in--eh, Clemence? I have sometimes thought that some other more famed mortal engrossed the affection that belongs, by prior claim, to me. Don't encourage any of those rustics, for I have somebody here so infinitely superior to any one whom I ever met before that I have decided that there is only one girl in the world worthy of him. Now, if I have aroused your curiosity sufficiently to have you call for 'more,' I will change the subject, and give you a little of the gossip that I know will interest you. "The last sensation is nothing else than the elopement of Melinda Brown with a curly-haired hotel waiter. Imagine the scene when the fact became known to the disconsolate Brown _mere_. The girl has found her level at last, my dear. It was all time and trouble thrown away trying to make anything of her. Melinda could not be a lady, because, as I always contended, it wasn't in her. She is now in her proper sphere. I hear that her husband has set up in the same business in which his worthy papa-in-law began life. Melinda lives in apartments over the grocery, and enjoys life hugely, as she never did in the elegant mansion she has left forever. "I've still another wedding to chronicle. You surely have not forgotten our fair Cynthia, the former confidante of Mrs. P. Crandall Crane, but now, alas! her friend no longer, but that lady's deadliest foe. But to 'begin at the beginning:'