Riatt thought to himself that he had never had much confidence in the intuition theory and now he had none.

They did not part at the termination of lunch.  It was almost a duty, Riatt considered, to show a stranger a few of the sights.  Miss Lane, who was extremely well-informed on all questions of art, suggested the Metropolitan Museum; and after that they took a taxicab and drove along the river and watched the winter sunset above the palisades; and then they went and had tea at the Plaza, and by the time they returned to Mrs. Lane it was almost the hour for dressing for dinner; and then Max sat gossiping with Mrs. Lane, for whom he had always had the deepest affection, until he knew he was going to be late.

They were late—­a difficult thing to be in the Fenimer household.  The party, a small one, was waiting when Miss Lane and Mr. Riatt were ushered in.  Nancy was there, and Hickson, and Mr. Linburne without his wife this time; and Mr. Fenimer himself, doing honor to his future son-in-law by taking a meal at home.

Christine in a wonderful pink chiffon and lace tea-gown came forward to greet Dorothy, rather than Max, to whom she gave merely an understanding smile, while she held the girl’s hand an instant.

“Max says this is your first visit to New York,” she said, after she had introduced her father and Nancy.  “It is good of you to give us an evening, when there are so many more amusing things to do, but Max says we are as interesting as Bushmen or Hottentots.  I hope you’ll find us so.”

The hope seemed unlikely to be fulfilled, for while the presence of Mr. Fenimer, who was rather a stickler for etiquette, prevented the perfect freedom that had reigned at the Usshers’, the talk turned on people whom Dorothy did not know, and it was so quick and allusive that no outsider could have followed it.  Hickson, soon appreciating something in Miss Lane’s situation not utterly unlike his own, was touched by her obvious isolation, and tried to make up for the neglect of the others.  Riatt, sitting between Nancy and Christine, had little time left to him for observation of any one else.

When dinner was over Christine instantly drew him away to her own little sitting-room, on pretense of showing him some letter of congratulation that she had received.  But once there, she shut the door, and standing before it, she said, with an air of the deepest feeling: 

“You’re in love with this girl.”

Riatt, who had sunk comfortably down on a sofa by the fire, looked up in surprise.

“And if I am?” he answered.

“You need not humiliate me by making it so evident,” she retorted, and almost stamped her foot.  “Lunching with her in public, and taking her to tea, as I was told, getting here so late for dinner—­I wish you could have heard the way Nancy and Lee Linburne were goading me before dinner about it.”

“My dear Christine,” said Max, and he was amused to hear a tone of real conjugal remonstrance in his voice, “you have lunched and dined in one day with Hickson, and yet I don’t feel I have any grounds of complaint.”