under the light. Freda! He could swear it by
the furs, did he not know that poise of head so well. The last one to
expect in all the world. He had given her better judgment than to thus
venture the ignominy of refusal, or, if she passed, the scorn of women.
He shook his head, without scrutiny; he knew her too well to be mistaken.
But she pressed closer. She lifted the black silk ribbon and as quickly
lowered it again. For one flashing, eternal second he looked upon her
face. It was not for nothing, the saying which had arisen in the
country, that Freda played with men as a child with bubbles. Not a word
was spoken. Prince stepped aside, and a few moments later might have
been seen resigning, with warm incoherence, the post to which he had been
unfaithful.

* * * * *

A woman, flexible of form, slender, yet rhythmic of strength in every
movement, now pausing with this group, now scanning that, urged a
restless and devious course among the revellers. Men recognized the
furs, and marvelled,--men who should have served upon the door committee;
but they were not prone to speech. Not so with the women. They had
better eyes for the lines of figure and tricks of carriage, and they knew
this form to be one with which they were unfamiliar; likewise the furs.
Mrs. McFee, emerging from the supper-room where all was in readiness,
caught one flash of the blazing, questing eyes through the silken mask-
slits, and received a start. She tried to recollect where she had seen
the like, and a vivid picture was recalled of a certain proud and
rebellious sinner whom she had once encountered on a fruitless errand for
the Lord.

So it was that the good woman took the trail in hot and righteous wrath,
a trail which brought her ultimately into the company of Mrs. Eppingwell
and Floyd Vanderlip. Mrs. Eppingwell had just found the opportunity to
talk with the man. She had determined, now that Flossie was so near at
hand, to proceed directly to the point, and an incisive little ethical
discourse was titillating on the end of her tongue, when the couple
became three. She noted, and pleasurably, the faintly foreign accent of
the "Beg pardon" with which the furred woman prefaced her immediate
appropriation of Floyd Vanderlip; and she courteously bowed her
permission for them to draw a little apart.

Then it was that Mrs. McFee's righteous hand descended, and accompanying
it in its descent was a black mask torn from a startled woma