dame to Madame Adelaide, the elder sister, the head of the king's household before the coming of the Dauphine. Under the influence of Madame Adelaide, Marie Antoinette took no part in promoting Durfort, indeed seemed indifferent. She had spoken to Choiseul about it, but never made any suggestion to the king. Again Mesdames Adelaide and Sophie were jealous of their sister Victoire, and strove to lessen Marie Antoinette's consideration toward her.

Then came a whimsical change in the situation, illustrative of the contemptible aspirations and intrigues of the shallow life of courts. The brother of the Countess de Narbonne, the bishop of Gap, in Provence, was ambitious of court life and asked for the post of almoner to Madame Victoire. But the Marquise de Durfort, who ruled Victoire, as the Countess Narbonne ruled Adelaide, determined Victoire to refuse the bishop, so long as Adelaide opposed Durfort's dukedom. The two managing dames capitulated in the end; the two promotions were brought about, Marie Antoinette having but to speak the word, when the king with pleasure declared the demand perfectly legitimate. Durfort was created duke and the bishop got his billet at court as almoner. It proved very hard for the intriguers to keep Louis at enmity to the mirthful maid; he enjoyed even her petulences; one day, to the chagrin of the cabals, while the hunt was lagging, Louis got into the Dauphine's vehicle, and as room was scant took her on his knees. At Fontainebleau, he wandered to her apartment of a morning in his dressing gown and slippers, drank his coffee there and remained two hours, delighted with her chattering. This tenderness had become less as the aunts succeeded in changing the charming frankness of the girl into a semblance of their own peevish, jealous, calculating reticence. From the natural freedom and familiarity of a granddaughter,

Marie Antoinette grew shrinking and speechless. Instead of storming into the king's privacy like a "sunbeam," as he called her at first, she wrote to him when she had a favor to ask, and if it were refused let the matter drop. Louis was deeply hurt by the change; he was too indolent to ask an explanation, but he showed that he felt the change by coldness and hardly concealed displeasure. Then Maria Theresa took up the remonstrance in severe terms. She wrote: "Every letter informs me that you are governed entirely by your aunts. I esteem them, I love them; but they have never known how to make themselves either esteemed or loved by their family or the public, and you wish to follow in their footsteps? Through their habit of letting themselves be governed by some one else they have made themselves disliked, disagreeable and wearisome, the objects of vexatious intrigues. I see you following the same course and must say nothing? I love you too well to do so and your affected silence on this point has distressed me and gives me little hope that you will change." The protest did its work, but it is significant of the girl's understanding, that she did not make the change precipitately. Mercy had the satisfaction, three months afterward, to report that the aunts no longer had the slightest guiding in the speech, conduct, or tastes of the Dauphine. She was courteous, conciliating, even affectionate, but she no longer heeded a word they said, or an insinuation as to the treatment of anybody at court. The old maids realized that something had snatched their catspaw away and they broke into bitter plaints, into unworthy schemes to humiliate and nullify the Dauphine's standing. They made overmuch of the new sister-in-law, the Countess de Provence, but Marie Antoinette had no difficulty in reducing that ill-tempered dame to her inherent, innocuous emptiness.

The Managing Editor sat at his desk and surveyed a copy of the last edition. The click of the type machines had died. away in the distance and from the bowels of the building came the far-off grumble of the press as it quickened to life the cold, white rolls of paper.

The Managing Editor's mouth drooped at the corners, the straight line of his eyebrows broke into an arch and his whole countenance spoke of weary satisfaction. For the front page was a miracle of "make-up;" the Big Strike story was a sure "beat," and the exclusive interview with the Man of the Hour looked eminently satisfactory in double-leads and occasional black letter. It seemed to him worth all the maddening rush and nerve-wrecking strain of the last half hour, and he lighted a fresh cigar with the virtuous air of a man who is conscious of having done well-a little more than his duty.

A dirty copy-boy sprawled in a corner awaiting the great man's orders, and improving his mind meanwhile by an earnest study of the sporting page. The inky urchin's irreverent, but cautious, whistle completed, rather than disturbed, the general air of peace which hung over the dingy room, and the rustle of the pages as they turned in the Managing Editor's fingers set the echoes whispering in the darkness out beyond the glow of the green-shaded electric light.

Suddenly the Managing Editor's face lost its air of tired contentment, and he leaned forward with a look of horror

freezing itself into every feature. He clutched the printed leaves on either side, and brought his head down almost to a level with the desk; then he leaped to his feet and his heavy chair crashed into the wall at his back. Upon consideration it would not be well to quote the Chief's words as the office-boy heard them. In the first place no reputable printer would consent to set the copy, and, secondly, the Managing Editor's proficiency in the use of emphatic language was such that to attempt to reduce his utterance to mere type were to do him a gross injustice.

Thirty seconds later the press room was startled by a wild-eyed apparition of the "boss." It was waving a copy of the paper and crying, "Pull up! for God's sake, pull up!" or something like that, and the foreman's hand was on the lever in a flash. The great wheels came to a standstill and the pressman, with a "What's the matter, sir?" on his grimy lips, hurried to the Managing Editor's side.

"The eighth page! the eighth page! Take it off! Quick! Do you hear; take it off!" said the apparition, in a voice somewhere between a gasp and a scream. "Send for Foley; send to the composing room for Foley!"

The stereotype plate slipped from its roller in an instant, and the Managing Editor was regarding it with sincere and soul-stirring profanity as the foreman of the composing room hurried up. Foley thought that his chief was choking as he

pointed with trembling finger to a paragraph under the heading "Society," and said:

"Get the form and take this out. Kill it! Never mind sending it upstairs, I tell you. Get the stuff and do it down here." Foley vanished. "How many have you run? How long have they been on the street?"

"They've been on the town for half an hour, sir," said the pressman.

"Might have known it," groaned the Head; "just my luck. O!" Even the press room shuddered.

Foley located the doomed paragraph, plucked it out, re-spaced and locked the form, long before the press room had recovered its composure, or the Chief his breath.

"What in hell struck the boss, I wonder," he growled to himself, as he saw the expurgated page on its way to

the stereotyping room. Then he picked up the five metal lines which he had just "killed" and read:

"It is rumored among the members of the East Kensington set that the announcement of the engagement of Miss Evelyn Blythe, the beautiful and talented daughter of ex-Senator John G. Blythe, to one of the city's best-known journalists is not many days distant."

"Well, I'm damned," murmured Foley, for want of some more appro'priate remark. He saw nothing in the innocent-looking bit of "society slush" to explain the situation. But Foley was a serious man, who chewed tobacco and lacked imagination.

There were certain wishes expressed in the Chief's room within the next half hour concerning the mortal and immortal career of the Society Editor. It was perhaps best that no elfin spirit of dreamland undertook to whisper these same wishes to the man whom they most concerned, else it is possible that his slumbers would have lost that sweetness which is born of a clear conscience. Mrs. Vail, too, dozing among the carriage cushions as she drove home from the dance, was blissfully ignorant of the fact that a tall, athletic-looking young man was at that moment thinking of her fat, white throat and experiencing the while an itching sensation in his fingers.

Stopping now and then to administer a vicious kick to the waste basket or to drive the points of the desk scissors into the woodwork, the Managing Editor paced the floor of his narrow lair, relieving his mind. He remembered only too well that tea to which he had gone because he felt he was sure to― But he didn't want to think of that now. Mrs. Vail had waylaid him-fat, but kittenish. Mrs. Vail, whose figure had departed with the last generation, but whose youthful manner had survived the ravages of years.

"You newspaper men are such dreadful things," she said, playfully, "and your society news is simply shocking. I wonder where you get your items or whatever you call them. You're always having things wrong, too. Only last week you said my 'dress was of black tulle' instead of mull. And think of calling a

gown a 'dress.' Just fancy! Now, why don't you send your society editor to someone who knows? You might send him to me; but it must be the editor, you know. I sha'n't see any horrid reporters. He could be sure of what I gave him, you know, and if he's a nice young man I can tell him lots of gossip for his columns. We women love to see that sort of thing in print," she added, dabbing at the Managing Editor's boutonnière with a fat forefinger.

It all came back to him with aggravating distinctness.

"To think that I was ass enough to listen to what that fat idiot of a woman said," he groaned. "So that's the 'sort of gossip,' is it! 'Send 'round the society editor,' indeed. Damn the society editor! If he'd only broken his neck before he got there! And where did she get it, I wonder? What right has any one to imagine it! Why Evelyn and I have. been pals since she was six! I'm her elder brother. Half a dozen men have shown her a hundred times more attention since she came out. I've scarcely

been with her this season. It's some damnable plot and that Society Man is in it."

There is a panacea at the Press Club labeled "Special," and when the steward bore away the decanter the Managing Editor had recovered sufficiently to at least remember that he ought to go to bed. The sun was shining high in the full glory of an October morning, when he arose, several hours before his usual time, for the sleep with which he was usually blessed refused to be caught for more than a few minutes at a time.

He thought it all over on the edge of his bed, and the memory of the previous night came back to him like a hideous dream, from which he had hoped to wake. He forgot to curse the society editor and Mrs. Vail, and he thought only of Evelyn. Of course she had seen it; that was a foregone conclusion-for the East Kensington papers were among the first sent out-and having seen it, what would she think! What would her people think-his paper, too. His face burned as a hundred weird conjectures

to call himself for years had grown to be a woman. He recalled his struggle of the past few months, and he laughed bitterly as he realized that the question was no longer to be debated; it had settled itself for all time. True enough, it was her money which barred the way and kept him silent before, yet he could see her, be with her and forget his life of weary grind in building air castles. But now In all his twenty-eight years of existence the Managing Editor had never before felt quite so miserable.

He dressed himself absently, but with mechanical care, and went out. The beauty of the day jarred upon him, and he felt conscious of a desire to see the blue of the sky give way to lead and the sunshine to a drizzling rain. He scarcely acknowledged the hearty greetings of the men whom he knew, and more than one turned in passing to look back wonderingly. Once or twice he asked himself where he was going, but the vision of her face, which kept coming and going through his mind with a dreamy sadness, turned his thoughts to smoke and he wandered aimlessly on like a man who is lost in a desert.

He had been walking for several hours before the quiet of the streets reminded him that he was in the suburbs. He stopped on a corner, drove his hands

deep into his pockets and looked at the pavement trying to bring back his scattered ideas. Thus he stood staring down at the cement until the man in the corner grocery left his post at the front door, and called his wife to see what she could make of the strange man across the way. But the grocer's wife had a mean opinion of her lord, as one whose ideas were unworthy her serious consideration, and, unluckily for her, she refused to leave her work in the kitchen until it was too late. The butcher's buxom spouse next door had the pleasure of telling her the story later in the day, with elaborate colorings looking to the construction of a dark mystery.

A carriage pulled up under a sharp order from a feminine voice, and the Managing Editor heard his name called.