go on in an organization that is supposed to contain the very best
people in the city. Now, I just want to tell you what I saw at one of
these same Cotillons in the first part of the season. Lilly Stannard
disappeared after supper and people said she was sick and was going
home, but I knew exactly what was the matter, because I had seen her at
the supper table. Well, I had gone outside on the steps to get a
mouthful of smoke, and my little cousin, Hetty, who has just come out
and who is only nineteen, was out there with me because it was so warm
inside, and _she_ had seen Lilly Stannard filling up with champagne at
supper, and didn't know what to make of it. Well, we were just talking
about it, and I was trying to make her believe too that Lilly Stannard
was sick, when here comes Lilly herself out to her carriage. Her maid
was supporting her, just about half-carrying her. Lilly's face was so
pale that the powder on it looked like ashes, her hair was all coming
down, and she was hiccoughing. Now," continued young Haight, his eyes
snapping, and his voice raised so as to make itself heard above the
exclamations of his two friends, "now, that's a _fact_; I give you my
word of honour that it actually happened. It's not hearsay; I saw it
myself. It's fine, isn't it?" he went on, wrathfully. "It sounds well,
don't it, when it's told _just as it happened_? The girl was dead drunk.
Oh, she may have made a mistake; it may have been the first time; but
the fact remains that she always drinks a lot of champagne at the
Cotillons, and other girls have been drunk there, too. Mrs. Doane, that
Van tells about, was _drunk_; that's the word for it. She was dead drunk
that night, and there was my little cousin, Hetty, who had never seen
even a man the worse for his liquor, standing there and taking it all
in. Of course, every one hushed the thing up or else said the poor girl
was sick; but Hetty knew, and what effect do you suppose it had upon a
little girl like that, who had always been told what nice,
irreproachable people went to the Cotillons? Hetty will never be the
same little girl now that she was before. Oh, it makes me damned tired."

"Well, I don't see," said Geary, "why the girls should make such a fuss
about the men keeping straight. I daresay now that this Stannard girl
would cut us all dead if she knew how drunk we were that night about
four months ago--that night that you fellows got thrown out of the
Luxembourg."

"No, I