ad put on her rubies.

For the first time since her marriage to Moffatt she was about to
receive in her house the people she most wished to see there. The
beginnings had been a little difficult; their first attempt in New York
was so unpromising that she feared they might not be able to live down
the sensational details of their reunion, and had insisted on her
husband's taking her back to Paris. But her apprehensions were
unfounded. It was only necessary to give people the time to pretend they
had forgotten; and already they were all pretending beautifully. The
French world had of course held out longest; it had strongholds she
might never capture. But already seceders were beginning to show
themselves, and her dinner-list that evening was graced with the names
of an authentic Duke and a not too-damaged Countess. In addition, of
course, she had the Shallums, the Chauncey Ellings, May Beringer, Dicky
Bowles, Walsingham Popple, and the rest of the New York frequenters of
the Nouveau Luxe; she had even, at the last minute, had the amusement of
adding Peter Van Degen to their number. In the evening there were to be
Spanish dancing and Russian singing; and Dicky Bowles had promised her
a Grand Duke for her next dinner, if she could secure the new tenor who
always refused to sing in private houses.

Even now, however, she was not always happy. She had everything she
wanted, but she still felt, at times, that there were other things she
might want if she knew about them. And there had been moments lately
when she had had to confess to herself that Moffatt did not fit into the
picture. At first she had been dazzled by his success and subdued by his
authority. He had given her all she had ever wished for, and more than
she had ever dreamed of having: he had made up to her for all her
failures and blunders, and there were hours when she still felt his
dominion and exulted in it. But there were others when she saw his
defects and was irritated by them: when his loudness and redness, his
misplaced joviality, his familiarity with the servants, his alternating
swagger and ceremony with her friends, jarred on perceptions that had
developed in her unawares. Now and then she caught herself thinking
that his two predecessors--who were gradually becoming merged in her
memory--would have said this or that differently, behaved otherwise in
such and such a case. And the comparison was almost always to Moffatt's
disadvantage.

This evenin