It was the most brilliant and animated picture of out-door life that Catalina had seen in Europe, and the general air of good breeding, of mingled vivacity and perfect dignity, the picturesque beauty of many of the women, the constant ripple of talk and laughter, the flare of light and the dim shades of the old trees, appealed powerfully to the girl from the most picturesque portion of the United States, and in whom scenes of mere fashion and frivolity aroused a resentment as passionate as if fed by envy and privation. She had stood one morning not a fortnight since on a corner of the Rue de Rivoli and watched carriage after carriage, automobile after automobile roll round the corner of the Place de la Concord, each framing women in the extravagant uniform of fashion—American women, all come from across the sea for one purpose only, the purpose for which they lived their useless, idle lives—more clothes. For this they spent two wretched weeks on the ocean every year—the ship’s doctor had told Catalina that the pampered American was the most unheroic sailor on the Atlantic—and they looked unnormal, exotic, mere shining butterflies whose necks would be twisted with one turn of a strong wrist in the first week of a revolution; a revolution of which, unindividual as they were, they would be a precipitating cause. But here there was no exotic class, none but legitimate causes of separation from the masses; it was the charming faces one noted, the lively expression of pleasure in mere living; the garments might be Parisian, but, being less than the woman, and worn without consciousness, they barely arrested the eye, and were no part of the picture, as was the mantilla or the rebosa. Catalina for once hated no one in the world, and even became oblivious of the grip on her arm. She looked about her with the wide, curious eyes of youth. Few gave her more than a passing glance, for her stiff hat threw an ugly shadow on her face and every line of her figure was hidden under her loose coat. But she noted that Lydia, who in the evening wore a small hat perched coquettishly on her fluffy hair, was receiving audible admiration. Suddenly she glanced out of the corner of her eye at Jane, but that severe virgin was staring moodily at the ground; her head ached and she longed for bed. Mr. Moulton, doing his best to be interested and stifle his yawns, was glancing in every direction but his immediate right, and consequently no one but his pretty daughter, and finally Catalina, noticed the handsome young Spaniard who had established communication with the blue eyes of the north. Finally the youth whispered something in which only the word _adorado_ was intelligible to Lydia, who clung to her father’s arm with a charming scowl. “Don’t be frightened,” whispered Catalina. “They don’t mean anything—not like Frenchmen.”