"There's Bertha Lajaune, over there by the pillar. Do you think she's so beautiful? I must say I don't. I heard the other day that she was a Jewess, and that her mother had one of those pawnbroking places south of Market Street, and that they'd only just moved away a few years when she married old Marcel Lajaune." As Pearl rattled on thus, assisted by Tod and Mrs. Gault, Letitia let her lorgnon follow on the track of their comments, idly passing from face to face as their light talk touched on it. She looked curiously at the wife of the Mexican gambler, a romantically handsome woman, with a skin like a magnolia-petal, and a frame of ebony hair setting off a face of Madonna-like softness. The lady in the box above was not pretty at all, Letitia thought. She had a broad, good-humored red face, an impudent nose, and a frizz of blond hair crimped far down on her forehead in the English fashion. Her black evening dress showed a section of white neck, and a piece of reddened arm was visible between her short sleeves and the edge of her long gloves. Letitia had been too young to remember her as Tiny Madison, and wondered how a Californian could come to look so like a British princess. The Central American lady was much more interesting. She was like a lily among the gipsy-looking dark women and small, beady-eyed men of her suite. She was thin, pale, and haggard, with artificially reddened hair and heavy eyelids much painted. Her eyes from under these looked out with an air of languid world-weariness. She had some immense diamonds round her throat, and the fan she lazily moved twinkled with them. Letitia studied her for some interested minutes, then passed on to Bertha Lajaune, of whom everybody had heard and most people were talking. She was accounted by many the most beautiful woman in San Francisco, and had risen from an unpenetrated obscurity by her marriage with a rich French wine merchant. Letitia disagreed with Pearl. She thought Mme. Lajaune quite as beautiful as people said she was. To-night, in a gorgeous toilet of pale lavender with a good deal of silver and lace about it, she had the appearance of an ennuyéd princess. Her pale skin, classic features, and large light eyes, with an extraordinarily wide sweep of lid, seemed to stamp her as one designed by nature to wear a crown. Letitia was about to turn and draw John Gault's attention to her, when the lorgnon, in its transit, suddenly commanded two faces just below--Colonel Reed's and Viola's. They were not looking her way, and Letitia riveted the glass on them. The colonel was sitting up and looking about alertly. He was instinct with life, enjoyment, and animation. With his neck craned out of his collar, he was surveying the audience, now and then turning to impart some hasty comment to Viola. He had the eager, happy air of a man who is in his element.