“How different it all seems from New Haven,” was Arthur’s first remark; and she said yes, it did; and asked him if he were really living in New York, and if it was not Mr. Townley with whom she had seen him walking the other day. “Mr. Townley is a great friend of mine, you must know; and I think it is too bad of him not to come to-night. And, by the way--whom were you with in the park this afternoon?” “With Mrs. Gower,” said Arthur. “Mrs. Gower? Mrs. Levison Gower? Was it? I didn’t see--” and no one would have guessed that the acquaintance of the lady mentioned was yet an unrealised dream to Miss Farnum. She led Arthur off soon after, and presented him to some of her most particular friends; Arthur was so fortunate as to secure one of these young ladies--Miss Marie Vanderpool--for the german; and they had seats very near the head. Altogether, Arthur was in the high tide of social favor; and nearly everyone whom he met talked to him of Mrs. Gower, and he marvelled a little that that lady--who had spoken almost tragically to him of her loneliness--should have so many dear and admiring friends. When he went home, it was with three or four tinsel orders at his button-hole; and Haviland, whose coat-collar was yet undecorated, met him in the hall. “Are you going the same way?” said he to Arthur; and when it turned out that they were, he asked him to drop in and have a cigar. Haviland knew that Arthur was a stranger in the city; and it soon turned out that they had one or two acquaintances in common. Then, as is the way of men, their conversation drifted to the last pretty face they had seen--Kitty Farnum. “She is a great friend of mine, and I stayed until the end on her account,” said Haviland; “though I don’t dance.” They stopped at Haviland’s house; and entering, Arthur was inducted into the most delightful bachelor rooms, down-stairs, filled with books, weapons, and implements for smoking. “Yes,” said Haviland, speaking of Miss Farnum; “and it’s a great pity to see her going as she is now. Why” (he went on, in answer to an inquiring look from Arthur) “she is wild upon getting into society, as she calls it, or her mother is for her. There is a girl, rich, beautiful, refined, well educated, and she positively looks up to a set of people the whole of whom aren’t worth her little finger, as if they were divinities.” “It certainly seems very funny, if it’s true,” said Arthur. “Funny?” fumed Haviland, “I assure you they are as much her inferiors as they would have her theirs. Fashion is a vulgar word, and fashionable people are a fast, vulgar set; fast, because they are too empty-headed and uncultivated to enjoy any pleasure of taste or intellect, and vulgar because they are too stupid to understand any other superiority than that of mere display.” Haviland spoke almost savagely, intemperately, as it seemed to Arthur, about such a trivial thing. “Can he be in love with her?” thought he; and he wondered why he told him all this.