ington-Andrews is to take entire control of the fancy
knick-knack table, where we shall sell gold match-boxes, solid silver
automobile head-lights, cigar-cutters, cocktail-shakers, and other
necessities of life among the select. I don't see how the thing can
fail, do you?"

"Not so far," said I.

"Each of the twelve lady patronesses has promised to be responsible for
the sale of a hundred tickets of admission at ten dollars apiece--that
makes twelve thousand dollars in admissions. It will cost each person
ten dollars more to get out, which, if only half of the tickets are
used, will be six thousand dollars--or eighteen thousand dollars in
entrance and exit fees alone."

"Henriette!" I cried, enthusiastically, "Madam Humbert was an amateur
alongside of you."

Mrs. Van Raffles smiled. "Thank you, Bunny," said she. "If I'd only been
a man--"

"Gad!" I ejaculated. "Wall Street would have been an infant in your
hands."

Well, the fateful day came. Henriette, to do her justice, had herself
spared no pains or expense to make the thing a success. I doubt if the
gardens of the Constant-Scrappes ever looked so beautiful. There were
flowers everywhere, and hanging from tree to tree from one end of their
twenty acres to the other were long and graceful garlands of
multicolored electric lights that when night came down upon the fete
made the scene appear like a veritable glimpse of fairyland. Everybody
that is anybody was there, with a multitude of others who may always be
counted upon to pay well to see their names in print or to get a view of
society at close range. Of course there was music of an entrancing sort,
the numbers being especially designed to touch the flintiest of hearts,
and Henriette was everywhere. No one, great or small, in that vast
gathering but received one of her gracious smiles, and it is no
exaggeration to say that half of the flowers purchased at rates that
would make a Fifth Avenue tailor hang his head in shame, were bought by
the gallant gentlemen of Newport for presentation to the hostess of the
day. These were immediately placed on sale again so that on the flower
account the receipts were perceptibly swelled.

A more festal occasion has never been known even in this festal
environment. The richest of the land vied with one another in making the
affair a vast financial success. The ever gallant Tommy Dare left the
scene twenty times for the mere privilege of paying his way in and out
that many