Anna Lombard | Page 2

achievements, according to my former vague ideas.
After a minute or two I was conscious of some one standing close beside me, and I turned slightly, to see a young lieutenant in the uniform of the Grenadiers.
"Beastly thin that girl is! Just look at her shoulderbones!" was his first remark addressed to me without any preface.
My eyes idly followed his, and I noticed the girl passing us, rather a pretty, graceful debutante, thin with the thinness of extreme youth and immaturity. Her shoulders rose white and smooth from her white gown of conventional, one might say viceregal lowness for at balls given to the viceroy, gowns are cut lower than usual in honor of the occasion but certainly beneath their delicate surface two little bones stood out rather too prominently. I looked at them absently, thinking it was the quality of the heart that beat beneath them that would exercise and influence me most in my judgment of their owner.
"She is very young," I returned. "In a year or two she will probably be fat enough to please you."
"Thanks; then she will be passee, don't you know. Confound it, these English girls are all thin when they're young and when they're fat they're old. There's no getting one just made to suit a fellow."
"And what about the girls; are the men made to suit them?" I inquired, turning to look at him more fully.
He had a square, white face, with pale blue, expression-, less eyes, a weak, receding chin and forehead, a weaker mouth, and a slight lisp in his voice. In his hand he" swung an eye-glass, which he lifted only occasionally when an unusually striking girl went by. He laughed goodhumoredly a fatuous, conceited laugh.
"Aw, ah I don't really know, upon my word; but they seem devilish glad to get us, don't you know, when they have a chance."
I did not answer. The conversation did not interest me; but where was I to find any better? I glanced along tho line of vacuous faces by the wall to right and left of me. What was the use of moving? I should only hear some? thing like this from the next man beside whom I should find myself.
There was a few moments' silence. Then my companion glanced suddenly at his card and affected to start witlj sudden recollection and contrition.
"By Jove! I had forgotten that poor Miss Scemler. She is waiting for me all this time. Promised her thi& dance, you know d---d scrawny girl, too, but then she'd be so awfully disappointed, you know. See you again," and he mingled with the line of idlers passing round the room, in his search for the doubtless tremulously eager and expectant Miss Scemlar.
Hardly a moment or two later another acquaintance came up to me. This time it was a handsome young fellow with a dark, eager face and high color.
"Well, Gerald, old man, what makes you look so awfully blue? Come and have a pick-me-up, a bitter or something is just what you want. Come along to the bar. You ought to be there, too. We're talking the race, you know. There's a fellow there has got all the tips. Now 'a the time to lay your money. He says Lemon won't be in it; they say now Parchment is; but you'd better hear it from him. Come along."
I stood still by the pillar and looked at his animated face with a slight smile.
"Thanks. I don't think I'll come. I do feel rather blue to-night."
"Why," he returned, rather blankly, "I think it an awfully jolly ball. I have been having a first-rate time."
"What have you been doing?" I asked, with a faint stirring of interest. Perhaps he could show me how to have a good time too.
"I have been in the bar all the time. The champagne is going just like water. All free, you know, and good stuff too. He's a jolly old com. He doesn't do things by halves."
The interest died out again.
"Don't let me keep you. You may lose some of the valuable tips," I said. "I'll stay here. I don't care for the races or the champagne either."
"You are such a queer fellow," he replied, eyeing me askance. "What do you care for, I wonder? But you'd better come."
With that he passed on, and I was again left alone. A short, stout, elderly gentleman scudded up to me next. He was a great talker, and it was a treat for him to find some unoccupied person apparently able to listen to him.
"Good-evening, my boy. I see you're enjoying yourself with the rest of the young folks."
"Good-evening, colonel," I replied.
"I've discovered all about that Brentwood affair tonight," he went on, coming nearer to me and speaking confidentially. "It's a scandal, a shame; it's clear that Brentwood accepted a