A Reporters' heaven, the Bazaar. So on its opening night Hilary named it to Flora.
"A faerye realm," the scribes themselves itemed it; "myriad lights--broad staircases gracef'y asc'd'g--ravish'g perfumes--met our gaze--garlandries of laurel and magn'a--prom'd'g from room to room--met our gaze--directed by masters of cerem'y in Conf'te G'd's unif'm--here turn'g to the right--fair women and brave men--carried thither by the dense throng--music with its volup's swell--met our gaze--again descend'g--arriv'g at din'g-hall--new scene of ench't bursts--refr't tables--enarched with ev'gr's and decked with labarums and burgees--thence your way lies through--costly volumes and shimm'g bijoutries--met our gaze!"
It was Kincaid who saw their laborious office in this flippant light, and so presented it to Anna that she laughed till she wept; laughing was now so easy. But when they saw one of the pencillers writing awkwardly with his left hand, aided by half a right arm in a pinned-up sleeve, her mirth had a sudden check. Yet presently it became a proud thrill, as the poor boy glowed with delight while Hilary stood and talked with him of the fearful Virginia day on which that ruin had befallen him at Hilary's own side in Kincaid's Battery, and then brought him to converse with her. This incident may account for the fervor with which a next morning's report extolled the wonders of the "fair chairman's" administrative skill and the matchless and most opportune executive supervision of Captain Hilary Kincaid. Flora read it with interest.
With interest of a different kind she read in a later issue another passage, handed her by the grandmother with the remark, "to warn you, my dear." The matter was a frothy bit of tragical romancing, purporting to have been gathered from two detectives out of their own experience of a year or so before, about a gift made to the Bazaar by Captain Kincaid, which had--"met our gaze jealously guarded under glass amid a brilliant collection of reliques, jewels, and bric-à-brac; a large, evil-looking knife still caked with the mud of the deadly affray, but bearing legibly in Italian on its blade the inscription, 'He who gets me in his body never need take a medicine,' and with a hilt and scabbard encrusted with gems."
Now, one of the things that made Madame Valcour good company among gentlewomen was her authoritative knowledge of precious stones. So when Flora finished reading and looked up, and the grandmother faintly smiled and shook her head, both understood.
"Paste?"
"Mostly."
"And the rest--not worth--?"
"Your stealing," simpered the connoisseur, and, reading, herself, added meditatively, "I should hate anyhow, for you to have that thing. The devil would be always at your ear."
"Whispering--what?"