a throng
of conventionally clothed and conventionally behaved guests that he was
immediately able to lose himself--and any lingering trace of
self-consciousness--in a company which, if appearances were to be
trusted, was Western only by reason of Wahaska's location on the map.
Indeed, the sudden and necessary rearrangement of the pieces on the
prefigured chess-board was almost embarrassing; and Margery's greeting
and welcome brought a grateful sense of relief and a certain recovery of
self-possession for which, a few minutes earlier, he had thought there
could be no possible Wahaskan demand.

"Thank you so much for coming down, and for resolving heroically not to
be bored," she began brightly. "And now that you've made your little
concession, I'll make mine. I sha'n't ask anything at all of
you"--piling the cushions in the corner of a wide window-seat and making
him sit down; "you are just to be an invalid this evening, you know, and
you needn't meet any more people than you want to."

When she had patted the pillows into place and was gone to welcome still
later comers, Griswold had a chance to look around him. The readjusting
mechanism was still at work. Beyond question it was all very different,
strikingly different, from his forecastings. A young woman was at the
piano, with a young man whose clothes fitted him and who was in nowise
conscious of them, turning the music for her. There was a pleasant hum
of conversation; the lights were not glaring; the furnishings were not
in bad taste--on the contrary, they were in exceedingly good taste.
Griswold smiled when he remembered that he had been looking forward to
something suggesting a cross between a neighborhood tea-drinking and a
church social. He was agreeably disappointed to find that the keynote
was distinctly well-mannered, passably urban, undeniably conventional.

And the charming young hostess.... From his corner of the window-seat
Griswold had a comprehensive view of the two great rooms, and beyond
them through a pillared opening to the candle-lighted dining-room where
the refreshments were served. Though the rooms were well filled, there
was but a single personality pervading them for the eager student of
types. Admitting that there were other women more beautiful, Griswold,
groping always for the fitting figure and the apt phrase, told himself
that Miss Grierson's crowning gift was an acute sense of the eternal
harmonies; she was always "in character."

H