tion, which
proved to be disappointingly undramatic. Their welcome in no wise
differed from that accorded to other guests. Every one said that Charles
Holton was a handsome fellow, and his sister Ethel a very "nice" though
rather an insipid and colorless young woman. It was generally understood
that Amzi's sisters had forced his hand. The conservatives were disposed
to excuse Amzi for permitting the Holtons to be invited; but they
thought the Holtons displayed bad taste in accepting. It was Phil's
party, and no Holton had any business to be connected with anything that
concerned Phil. And Tom Kirkwood's feelings ought to have been
considered, said his old friends.

"You see," Charles Holton remarked to Phil, when he had bowed over her
hand with a good deal of manner, "I really did give up that New York
trip. I would have come back from China to see you in that gown!"

The musicians (five artists from the capital, and not the drummer and
piano-thumper usually considered adequate in Montgomery for fraternity
and class functions) now struck up the first number.

"Please give me a lot of dances," begged Charles, looking at Phil's
card.

"One! Just one!" replied Phil.

"You are bound to be a great tyrant; you should be merciful to your
humblest subject."

"I haven't seen any of the humility yet," she laughed.

Her Uncle Lawrence Hastings had undertaken to manage the dance and he
glided away with her to the strains of the first waltz. Hastings boasted
a velvet collar to his dress-coat, and the town had not yet ceased to
marvel that fortune had sent to its door a gentleman so exquisite, so
finished, so identified with the most fascinating of all the arts.
Hastings had for the social affairs of Montgomery a haughty scorn. It
pained him greatly to be asked to a neighbor's for "supper,"
particularly when it was quite likely that the hostess would herself
cook and serve the food; and the Fortnightly Assembly, a club of married
folk that met to dance in Masonic Hall, was to him the tamest, the
dullest of organizations, and the fact that his brother-in-law Waterman,
who waltzed like a tipsy barrel, enjoyed those harmless entertainments
had done much to embitter Hastings's life. Hastings imagined himself in
love frequently; the Dramatic Club afforded opportunities for the
intense flirtations in which his nature delighted. The parents of
several young women who had taken part in his amateur theatricals had
been concerned for