earrangement with other hostesses,
had now begun to arrive, and the confusion grew as coach and brougham
and motor came swaying up through the falling snow to deposit their
jewelled cargoes of silks and laces under the vast awning picketed by
policemen and lined with fur-swathed grooms and spindle-legged
chauffeurs in coats of pony-skin.

The Cornelius Suydams, emerging from the house, offered Selwyn tonneau
room, but he smilingly declined, having a mind for solitude and the
Lenox Club. A phalanx of debutantes, opera bound, also left. Then the
tide set heavily the other way, and there seemed no end to the line of
arriving vehicles and guests, until he heard a name pronounced; a
policeman warned back an approaching Fiat; and Selwyn saw Mrs. Ruthven,
enveloped in white furs, step from the portal.

She saw him as he moved back, nodded, passed directly to her brougham,
and set foot on the step. Pausing here, she looked about her, right and
left, then over her shoulder straight back at Selwyn; and as she stood
in silence evidently awaiting him, it became impossible for him any
longer to misunderstand without a public affront to her.

When he started toward her she spoke to her maid, and the latter moved
aside with a word to the groom in waiting.

"My maid will dismiss your carriage," she said pleasantly when he halted
beside her. "There is one thing more which I must say to you."

Was this what he had expected hazard might bring to him?--was this the
prophecy of his hammering pulses?

"Please hurry before people come out," she added, and entered the
brougham.

"I can't do this," he muttered.

"I've sent away my maid," she said. "Nobody has noticed; those are
servants out there. Will you please come before anybody arriving or
departing does notice?"

And, as he did not move: "Are you going to make me conspicuous by this
humiliation before servants?"

He said something between his set teeth and entered the brougham.

"Do you know what you've done?" he demanded harshly.

"Yes; nothing yet. But you would have done enough to stir this borough
if you had delayed another second."

"Your maid saw--"

"My maid is _my_ maid."

He leaned back in his corner, gray eyes narrowing.

"Naturally," he said, "you are the one to be considered, not the man in
the case."

"Thank you. _Are_ you the man in the case?"

"There is no case," he said coolly.

"Then why worry about me?"

He folded his arms, sullenly at bay; yet