“What a lovely creature!”

“That is Miss Fenimer.”

A sudden and deep flush spread over Miss Lane’s face.

“And you have been telling me of your indifference to her?” she asked bitterly.  “How could any man be indifferent!”

“Good Heavens,” cried Riatt fiercely.  “All you women are alike!  Beauty isn’t the only thing in the world for a man to love.  There are such things as truth and honor—­”

“Yes, and old friendship, too,” said Miss Lane, “but they don’t always amount to much.”

“That is an unnecessary, unkind thing to say,” he answered.  “My friendship for you means a good deal more to me than my engagement to her.”

“Max, I don’t need to be consoled or soothed about your engagement,” said Miss Lane with a good deal of spirit.  “As far as I am concerned you are quite free not only to become engaged, but to have any feeling you like for the lady you have chosen.  I’m sure I congratulate you very heartily.”

“You mean you don’t believe a word of what I have been trying to tell you.”

“Oh, yes, I do.  I believe you are engaged.”

Perhaps it was as well that at this instant, Christine’s eyes fell upon her; she stared, then laughed, and pointed him out to Hickson, who glanced at him coldly; he was evidently thinking that he would not have taken another girl out to lunch the very day his engagement was announced.

“I suppose I had better go and speak to them,” Max said.

“I should think so,” replied Dorothy tonelessly.  “Who are the others?”

Riatt, not sorry for a moment’s respite, entered into a detailed account of Lee Linburne.  He was the third generation of a great fortune, augmenting rather than decreasing with years.  He was but little over thirty and had taken the whole field of amusement and sports as his own.  He played polo, had a racing stable and a racing yacht, had gone in recently for flying (hence Riatt’s connection with him), occasionally financed a theatrical show, and now and then attended a directors’ meeting of some of his grandfather’s companies.  The result was that his name was as widely known through the country as Abraham Lincoln’s.  Dorothy knew as soon as she heard his name, that he had married a girl from Pittsburg, and had gone through her native city in a private car on his honeymoon three years before, and had stopped, she rather thought, and had lunch with the Governor of the State.

On Hickson, Max touched more briefly.

When at last he did cross the room, Christine received him with the utmost cordiality.

“What luck to run across you, though of course this is the only place in New York where one can get food that doesn’t actually poison one.  Last week—­do you remember, Lee?  We dined somewhere or other with the Petermans and nothing from the beginning of dinner to the end was fit to eat.  But, bless them, they did not know.  Have you met Mrs. Linburne?  Oh, she knows all about us.  In fact every one does, for I can’t resist wearing this.”  She moved her left hand on which his diamond shone like a swollen star.  “How did you find my father?”