"As I told you once, I feel dreadfully blasé to-night," she said, picking to pieces a rose which had fallen away from her stylish gown. "To watch your wonderful protégée rejoicing over the sweet, uncertain trophies of her first cotillion, is entirely refreshing. Her extravagant happiness makes me feel as though I had finished my course and been decidedly beaten." "Did you ever see anyone so effulgent?" Ethel continued, following with her eyes the outlines of Mariposilla's figure. "No one in the room can approach her in beauty," she mused amiably. "And yet the girl inspires no jealousy; for, like Donatello, her moral nature seems absolutely undeveloped. Sometimes she seems like an exquisite link between nature and the fallen angels." "Have you, too, noticed this?" I exclaimed. "Yes," Ethel replied, "I have been thinking about her ever since that first visit to Crown Hill. If I am ever famous in the Salon, Mariposilla shall be the theme for my picture." "If you work I am sure you will succeed," I replied. "I hope I shall continue to work," she answered, "but even work is an uncertain proviso. Sometimes I wonder why God inconveniences the ordinary mortal with an imagination. Why does he not reserve the allurements of art for the genius of the century alone?" "I so often envy my sister," the girl continued. "It is beautiful to watch her at a high church service. This one exalted caprice seems to satisfy entirely her cravings after the extraordinary. She believes the tenets of her faith so implicitly that she is never beguiled into uncomfortable doubts. She never reaches after unattainable things, and is absolutely satisfied with the common conventions of life." "Then surely she is happy?" I replied. "Yes," answered Ethel, "but look at Sidney Sanderson. Certainly he is in love with Mariposilla! Watch him a moment and see how he has forgotten his blasé part to-night. All things considered, I believe the match would be a good one," she continued. "Sid is carnal enough to appreciate Mariposilla's physical perfection, and I believe he could easily dispense with moral and intellectual qualities." Later, when Ethel bade me good-night, she whispered that I might depend upon her as my ally. "If Mr. Sidney becomes too masterful let me know," she said, gaily, as she enveloped herself in the folds of her evening cloak. Long after the hotel had been hushed with the final hush which follows a ball, I lay awake thinking of Mariposilla and the possible intentions of Sidney Sanderson. Time after time her beautiful, passionate face appeared before me, tortured, one moment, with wild, half-civilized jealousy; the next, transcendent with blissful trust in the man she loved. When I awoke from my unrefreshing slumbers at the usual time, aroused by Marjorie, who had crawled into my bed, I felt that I must invent a pretext for returning Mariposilla as soon as possible to the care of her mother.