dy of Peacock Alley!"

VII

SURPRISES

Peacock Alley was in full gorgeousness when Harleston, just at five
o'clock, paused on the landing above the marble stairs inside the F
Street entrance and surveyed the motley throng--busy with looking and
being looked at, with charming and being charmed, with wondering and
being wondered at, with aping and being aped, with patronizing and being
patronized, with flattering and being flattered, with fawning and being
fawned upon, with deceiving and being deceived, with bluffing and being
bluffed, with splurging, with pretending, with every trick and artifice
and sham and chicanery that society and politics know, or can fancy.

Harleston was familiar with it all for too many years even to accord it
a glance of contemptuous indifference--when he had anything else to
occupy his mind; and just now his mind was on a lady in black with
three American Beauties on the gown.

He went slowly down the steps to the main corridor and joined the
buzzing, kaleidoscopic crowd.

Somewhere on the floor above, an orchestra was playing for the
_dansant_; and the music came fitfully through the chatter and
confusion. He nodded to some acquaintances, bowed formally to others,
shook hands when it could not be avoided; all the while progressing
slowly down the corridor in search of three red roses on a black gown.

And near the far end he saw, for an instant through a rift in the crowd,
the three roses on a black gown, but not the face above them; the next
instant the rift closed. However, he knew now that she was here and
where to find her, and he made his way through the press toward where
she was waiting for him.

Then the crowd suddenly opened--as crowds do--and he saw, on the same
side of the corridor and scarcely ten feet apart, two slender women in
black and wearing red roses; one was Mrs. Winton, the other he had never
seen.

It brought him to a sharp pause. Then he smiled. Ranleigh was right!
There were altogether too many women in this case. And which one was
waiting for him? He knew neither, but there was the chance that the one
he was to meet knew him.

And so he adventured it, walking slowly toward them, and taking care
that they should notice him.

They did.

Mrs. Winton glanced at him casually and impersonally.

The unknown, whose face was from him, turned sharply when he dropped his
stick, and looked at him unrecognizingly. As her eyes came down they
rested on the