manufacture of rubber that had brought him
a fortune before he was thirty. He was now engaged in spending it on
aviation experiments. He was reckless and successful. Besides which he
was understood to be personally attractive--his picture in a silver
frame stood on a neighboring table. He was of the lean type that Mrs.
Almar admired.

Now it was perfectly clear to her why he was asked. Mrs. Ussher adored
Christine Fenimer. Of all girls in the world it was essential that
Christine should marry money. This man, Max Riatt, new to the fashionable
world, ought to be comparatively easy game. The thing ought to go on
wheels. But Mrs. Almar herself was not indifferent to six feet of
splendid masculinity; nor without her own uses at the moment for a
good-looking young man.

In other words, there was going to be a contest; in the full sight of the
little public that really mattered, the lists were set. Nobody present,
except perhaps Wickham, who was dangerously ignorant of the world in
which he was moving, doubted for one moment that Miss Fenimer had
resolved to marry Max Riatt, if, that is, he turned out to be actually as
per the recommendations of Mrs. Ussher; nor was it less certain that Mrs.
Almar intended that he should be hers.

Of course if Mrs. Ussher had been absolutely single-minded, she would not
have invited Mrs. Almar to this party; but though a warm friend to
Christine Fenimer, Laura was not a fanatic, and the piratical Nancy was
her friend, too.

Mrs. Almar could have pleaded an additional reason for her wish to
interfere with this match, besides the natural one of not wishing Miss
Fenimer to attain any success; and that was the fact that Edward Hickson,
her brother, had wanted for several years to marry Christine. Hickson was
a dull, kindly, fairly well-to-do young man--exactly the type you would
like to see your rival marry. Hickson had motored out with his sister,
and had received some excellent counsel on the way.

"Now, Ned," she had said, "don't cut your own throat by being an adoring
foil. Don't let Christine grind your face in the dust, just to show this
new man that she can do it."

"You don't do Christine justice," he had answered, "if you think she
would do that."

His sister did not reply. She thought it would have been doing the girl
injustice to suppose that she would do anything else.

They were still sitting about the tea-table at a quarter to seven, when
Christine and Mrs. Almar rose simu