ed and worked slowly. She concluded to change the subject
and offer to read him the article in the Review, so complimentary to
himself; but she turned her head to discover that he was sound asleep.

She laughed, half vexed, half amused. Then she laid a rug lightly over
his knees, and softly replenished the fire. The room was deliciously
warm, her own chair very comfortable. She too fell asleep.

She was rudely awakened. Gwynne was shaking her by the shoulder, and his
face was white with consternation.

"Good God!" he exclaimed. "Do you know what time it is? It is two
o'clock! Why did you let me sleep? Those old tabbies--"

"They must be asleep too," said Isabel, indifferently. "Come out, and I
will hold the lantern while you saddle Kaiser."

XXVII

Mrs. Haight was hastily putting her parlor in order for the "Ten o'Clock
Five Hundred Club." She was without a servant, having had four hired
girls and three Japs in the past month; during the last three days she
had cooked for herself and Mr. Haight, "done all the work," and attended
seven card parties. Mr. Haight, who had not had his dinner the night
before until nine o'clock, and whose steak this morning had been burned
and his coffee muddy, had gone down-town in a huff, threatening to move
to the hotel unless his wife found a servant or her sanity.

Mrs. Haight, who wore a red flannel wrapper trimmed with black lace,
which she believed became her style, shook up the sofa-cushions on the
divan, where she longed to receive her guests reclining in Oriental
voluptuousness, but had never dared, and dusted the table as if she were
slapping an enemy's face. The bed was not made, nor likely to be before
night, and she too knew the penalties of burned steak and bad coffee,
enhanced by the irritability of the insomniac. She had her redeeming
virtues, no doubt; all have, even burglars and murderers, until they
slip into the region of pathology; but this morning she looked and felt
like a she-wolf; and few mammals are so dangerous, particularly a
she-wolf that has never suckled young.

Her expected guests arrived promptly, glowing with the light dry cold,
some wearing furs because they became the season, others thin cloth
jackets over their shirt-waists. One had bundled herself into a broche
shawl and "run over" hatless. Each, as she entered the parlor, cast a
critical eye upon the silver spoon standing in lonely glory on the
mantel-piece, and nodded or scowled, accor