g hat and coat in the cloak room, picked up the small
slim envelope bearing his name.

The card within disclosed the information that he was to take in Mrs.
Somebody-or-Other; he made his way through a great many people, found
his hostess, backed off, stood on one leg for a moment like a reflective
water-fowl, then found Mrs. Somebody-or-Other and was absently good to
her through a great deal of noise and some Spanish music, which seemed
to squirt through a thicket of palms and bespatter everybody.

"Wonderful music," observed his dinner partner, with singular
originality; "_so_ like Carmen."

"Is it?" he replied, and took her away at a nod from his hostess, whose
daughter Dorothy leaned forward from her partner's arm at the same
moment, and whispered: "I _must_ speak to you, mamma! You _can't_ put
Captain Selwyn there because--"

But her mother was deaf and smilingly sensitive about it, so she merely
guessed what reply her child expected: "It's all settled, dear; Captain
Selwyn arrived a moment ago." And she closed the file.

It was already too late, anyhow; and presently, turning to see who was
seated on his left, Selwyn found himself gazing into the calm, flushed
face of Alixe Ruthven. It was their third encounter.

They exchanged a dazed nod of recognition, a meaningless murmur, and
turned again, apparently undisturbed, to their respective dinner
partners.

A great many curious eyes, lingering on them, shifted elsewhere, in
reluctant disappointment.

As for the hostess, she had, for one instant, come as near to passing
heavenward as she could without doing it when she discovered the
situation. Then she accepted it with true humour. She could afford to.
But her daughters, Sheila and Dorothy, suffered acutely, being of this
year's output and martyrs to responsibility.

Meanwhile, Selwyn, grimly aware of an accident somewhere, and perfectly
conscious of the feelings which must by this time dominate his hostess,
was wondering how best to avoid anything that might resemble a
situation.

Instead of two or three dozen small tables, scattered among the palms of
the winter garden, their hostess had preferred to construct a great oval
board around the aquarium. The arrangement made it a little easier for
Selwyn and Mrs. Ruthven. He talked to his dinner partner until she began
to respond in monosyllables, which closed each subject that he opened
and wearied him as much as he was boring her. But Bradley Harmon, the