d together for a moment, he led the talk into Charleston
channels, asking about this person and that till the folk at Vernons came
on the _tapis_.

"Is it true what I hear, that Richard Pinckney has become engaged to the
girl who is staying there?" asked Silas.

Frances smiled.

"I don't think so," she replied. "Who told you?"

"Upon my word I forget," said he, "but I judged mostly by my own
eyes--they seemed like an engaged couple when I saw them last."

New guests were arriving and she had to go forward to help in receiving
them. Silas moved towards her, but in the next moment they had for a
snatch of conversation, she did not refer to the subject, nor did he.

The Vernons people were late, so late that when they arrived they were the
last of the guests; dancing was in progress and, on entering the ballroom,
Richard Pinckney was treated to the pleasing sight of his _fiancee_
whirling in the arms of Silas Grangerson.

Phyl, looking lovely in the simple, rather old-fashioned dress evolved for
her by the combined geniuses of Maria Pinckney and Madame Organdie,
produced that sensation which can only be evoked by newness, her effect
was instantaneous and profound, it touched not only every one of these
strangers but also Maria Pinckney and Richard. They had come with her, but
it was only in the ballroom that they recognised with whom they had come.

So with a book, a picture, a play, the producer and his friends only
recognise its merits fully when it is staged and condemned or praised by
the public.

A _debutante_ fails or succeeds at first glance, and the instantaneous
success of Phyl was a record in successes.

And Frances Rhett had to watch it and dance. The Inquisition had its
torments; Society has improved on them, for her victims cannot cry out and
the torments of Frances Rhett were acute. Not that she was troubling much
about Richard Pinckney and what the poisonous Silas had said; she was not
in love with Richard Pinckney, but she was passionately in love with
herself. She was the belle of Charleston; had been for the last year; and
one of her chief incentives to marriage was an intuitive knowledge that
prestige fades, that the position of principal girl in any society is like
the position of the billiard ball the juggler balances on the end of a
cue--precarious. She wanted to get married and ring down the curtain on an
unspoiled success, and now in a moment she saw herself dethroned.

In a moment. For