Mrs. Vandervelde always said that Berkeley Hayden was the most critical man of her acquaintance, and that his taste was infallible.  He had an unerring sense of proportion, and that miracle of judgment which is good taste.  He was one of those fortunate people who, as the saying goes, are born with a gold spoon in the mouth.  Unlike most inheritors of great wealth, he not only spent freely but added even more freely to the ancestral holdings.  He was moneyed enough to do as he pleased without being considered eccentric; he could even afford to be esthetic, and to prefer Epicurus to St. Paul.  He had a highly important collection of modern paintings, and an even more valuable one of Tanagra figurines, old Greek coins, and medieval church plate.  He had, too, the reputation of being the most gun-shy and bullet-proof of social lions.  At thirty he was a handsome, well-groomed, rather bored personage, with sleekly-brushed blond hair and a short mustache.  He looked important, and one suspected that he must have been at some pains to keep his waist line so inconspicuous.  For the rest, he was as really cultivated and pleasing a pagan as one may find, and so wittily ironical he might have been mistaken for a Frenchman.

Mrs. Vandervelde had planned that he should be the only guest.  She knew this would please him, as well as suit her own purpose, which was that he should see young Mrs. Peter Champneys.  She was curious to learn what impression Anne would create, and if Berkeley Hayden’s judgment would coincide with her own.  She had informed him that Jason’s ward was stopping with them; would, in fact, go abroad with her shortly.  Mr. Hayden was not interested.  He thought a ward rather a bore for the Vanderveldes.

He was standing with his back to the mantel, facing the door, when Nancy entered the room.  In the filmy black Mrs. Vandervelde had selected for her, tall and slim, she paused for the fraction of a second and lifted her cool, shining, inscrutable green eyes to his lazy blue ones.  Mrs. Vandervelde had prevailed upon her to retain her own fashion of wearing her hair in plaits wound around her head, and the new maid had managed to soften the severity of the style and so heightened its effectiveness.  A small string of black pearls was around her throat, and pendants of the same beautiful jewels hung from her ears.  Berkeley Hayden started, and his eyes widened.  Mrs. Vandervelde, who had been watching him intently, sighed imperceptibly.

“I wasn’t mistaken, then,” she thought, and smiled to herself.

She could have hugged Anne Champneys for her beautifully unconscious manner.  Of course the girl didn’t understand she was being signally honored and favored by Hayden’s openly interested notice, but Marcia reflected amusedly that it wouldn’t have made much difference if Anne had known.  He didn’t interest her, except casually and impersonally.  She thought him a very good-looking man, in his way, but rather old:  say all of thirty:—­and