They were playing the ballet music from “Sylvia” in the loggia, a levity which no one resented, not even the old gentleman with the pale daughter, and the unctuous wheeze of the clarionette floated through the palms of the court where the fountain was flinging diamonds into the sunlight of a Southern February. The Spanish banners flapped lazily at the gate. No one resented them either, for it was a good six months since we had been at war with Spain. Moreover, St. Augustine never had been at war with Spain. It wouldn’t have been right. The old gentleman was reading a St. Louis newspaper. The pale daughter was looking out through the arch toward the Alcazar. Near at hand were two youngish women with books in their laps. I could hear one saying to the other: “You see Virgil stole from Homer, and Dante was Virgil’s pupil. Dante gave credit to Virgil, but Virgil didn’t give credit to anybody.” Evidently this fellow Virgil was a rascal. [Illustration] The Druggles party had returned from the links, and the general had a story about a tremendous drive of his that carried his ball among the prisoners at San Marco, and his little brush, afterward, with the guard at the gate. Mrs. Willie Roysell of Boston was complaining at the news that if you went to any of the hotels further South you would have to sleep on the steps. I had just parted from Mrs. Roysell when I saw Madge Emmerton pass under the portcullis. I knew her despite the veil and the shadow of her broad hat. With one hand she held the loose of her white piqué. In the other she was managing a purse and some small packages that suggested the bazars down the street. When we each had said how surprised we were, and had taken chairs in the shade, she looked at me suddenly and said, “I don’t believe you know.” “Know what?” I bluntly returned, looking into her radiant face. “Of course you don’t. You never could do it so well. And you would have had the grace to ask after him.” “Well,” I said, “I haven’t had time to ask after anybody yet. Please explain, so that I can ask intelligently. Are you married or anything of that sort?” She nodded frankly. It all came back to me then. Two of the handsomest young men in Philadelphia were in a state of intense willingness when I last saw her. But she was not one of whom it ever was possible to guess whom or when she would marry. And I never had heard a word of the engagement. There was a great disparity in the financial resources of the two men, and, as it had seemed from informed comment, some disparity also in their intellectual resources. It is only fair to Providence to say that it had generously given the great talents to the man without money. “Which one did you marry?” I asked. “The poor one or the rich one?” “The rich one,” she replied with an entirely unembarrassed laugh. “So that the poor one is now doubly poor, and the rich one doubly rich.”