keep company with the handsome lorgnette and the big red rose. She did not shake hands with every guest that she welcomed, but to all her welcome was gracious, and she did shake hands with each guest that bade her adieu, and contrived to convey with the lingering touch of her old, maidenly fingers how much she regretted the departure. Every one she had privileged to do so had come. Almost always it was so. Few ever missed an opportunity to visit Miss Julia at Rosehill. There was a perfume and repose both about the woman and her home that were strongly inviting, and that every one found strangely refreshing, and that some also found surprisingly stimulating. And her invitations were too scrupulously limited to be lightly disregarded. Miss Julia was old-fashioned, and every one knew she was poor. (Indeed, she boasted of it indirectly—too highly-bred to boast openly of anything—frankly proud of her poverty, since it was part and piece of General Lee’s defeat.) To be reported in the _Star_ as having been among Miss Julia Townsend’s guests gave a social cachet which nothing in the capital itself could give. Every one who could be was at Rosehill today. And in several ways the gathering was more catholic than a superficial intelligence might have expected. It was natural enough that a poor public school teacher should rub shoulders here with a California millionaire, and the well-known actress seemed a not inappropriate guest, since her personal character was as unsmirched as her complexion was natural, and the South always has honored all the great arts. But a Jewish banker and his beautiful daughter, a Punjabi prince and the Siamese Minister might have seemed to some a little unaccountable. Miss Townsend was a stanch Episcopalian, but she had no theological narrowness. She respected Jews—if they were orthodox; she’d little tolerance for any apostasy—“character” was the human quality she most valued, and her love of beauty—especially the beauty of women—was almost inordinate. That accounted for Moses Strauss and his lovely daughter, Esther. The Siamese Minister and the Punjabi prince were not beautiful, and neither had been in Washington long enough yet to have established, or, on the other hand, to have lost, any great reputation for personal or intellectual character. It was the fashion just then to “know” all the Orientals one could—but that was no sesame to the door of Rosehill. Miss Julia drew a very wide distinction between Africa and Asia, and she liked to show that she did. Four girls sat chatting idly a little way from the small linen-and-lace-covered table they had impoverished of its cakes and ice-creams and bonbons.