"Jane Knickerbocker," said the ghost who was giving the party, "your family has spent many hours telling the present generation of your womanly virtues, and they cannot fail in having an overweening respect for any opinion you may utter. Shall this girl who bears your blood marry yon youth?" "Let them wed by all means, if they see advantage in it. I vow if I could come back to earth and live my twenty-eight years over again, I would join hands with Jean, our Elizabeth-Town perfumer." Lord Cornbury and the shades about him were bowed with mirth. "Janet, you giddy girl, though half the age of most of us, I protest you are becoming a wit. You will be getting into society next," he cried. "I shall never be mean enough to tell that in sublunary times one of the first American Knickerbockers knew me intimately only as my valet." "A fig for your class distinctions," called the fair indignant, hunting for a rouge rag. "Years ago we heard ''twas money made the court circle at York.' Why, you must remember how you feared your creditors when they first came below." "Alack, indeed," said his Lordship plaintively, "this hooped petticoat was never paid for." After dishevelled Jane had vanished again into the powdering closet whence she had first emerged, the lady of the banished portrait moved over to Patricia and her lover. Standing side by side the resemblance between the two women was remarkable. One was the budding flower; the other the fragile shadow of a beautiful life. "Her kind will always exist," she said. "They marry for pearl powders and other vanities, and usually seek, or are forced into, a gilded cage. There, like jackdaws, they call out their possessions from dawn till night, and the heedless world passing by sees the sparkling of the gold, mistakes the caws for singing, and applauds. I knew love--the ideal love that smiles at one from the wayside when one is seeking it in the well-kept gardens. I paid for it with my heart's blood, and I never had cause to regret. Over the rough places of my earthly journey it followed me with radiant illusions. The April winds were sweeter, the sunshine on the roads warmer. I felt all the raptures mother nature gives her children. That is why I could leave the other world to do you this service. _Love_ is the one thing death cannot lull to sleep!" Patricia tried to answer, but the power of speech had left her for the moment. Juma's face was glowing with peaceful smiles. He bent low on his right knee to kiss the diaphanous draperies of the shade. Outside in the night there arose the low murmurous chanting of the town waits moving homeward. A chime of bells, as soft as a blessing. The thorns had fallen from the brows of love.