“You are undoubtedly a pleasing sight, Miss Marteen,” he smiled; “and a long life and a merry one to you.  Your daughter does you credit, dear lady,” he added, turning to his hostess.

Dorothy, bubbling over with enthusiasm, claimed his hand again.  “It was so sweet of you to send me that necklace in those wonderful flowers.  See—­I’m wearing it.”  She fondled a slender seed pearl rope at her throat.  “Mother told me it was far too beautiful and I must send it back.  But I was most undutiful.  I said I wouldn’t—­just wouldn’t.  I know you picked it out for me yourself—­now, didn’t you?” He nodded somewhat whimsically.  “There!  I told mother so; and it would be rude, most rude, not to accept it—­wouldn’t it?”

He laughed gruffly.  “It certainly would—­and, really, you know your mother has a mania for refusing things.  Why, I owe her—­never mind, I won’t tell you now—­but I would have felt very much hurt, Miss Debutante, if you’d thrown back my little present.  I’m sure I selected something quite modest and inconspicuous....  Dear me, I’m blocking the whole doorway.  Pardon me.”

He stepped back, nodding here and there to an acquaintance.  Finally catching sight of his sister in the dining room, he joined her, and stood for a moment gazing at the commonplace comedy of presentations.

Miss Gard yawned.  “My dear Marcus, who ever heard of you attending a tea?  Really, I didn’t know you knew these people so well.”

Gard was glad of this opportunity.  His sister had a praiseworthy manner of distributing his slightest word—­of which he not infrequently took advantage.

“Well, you see, I was indebted to Marteen for a number of kindnesses in the early days, though we’d rather drifted apart before he died—­had some slight business differences, in fact.  But I’d like to do all I can for his widow and that really sweet child of theirs.  I have a small nest egg in trust for her—­some investments I advised Mrs. Marteen to make.  Who is that chap who’s so devoted?” he asked suddenly, switching the subject, as his quick eye noted the change of Dorothy’s expression under the admiring glances of a tall young man of athletic proportions, whose face seemed strangely familiar.

Miss Gard lorgnetted.  “That?  Oh, that’s only Teddy Mahr, Victor Mahr’s son.  He was a famous ’whaleback’—­I think that’s what they call it—­on the Yale football team.  They say that he’s the one thing, besides himself, that the old cormorant really cares about.”

Marcus Gard stiffened, and his jaw protruded with a peculiar bunching of the cheek muscles, characteristic of him in his moments of irritation.  He looked again at Dorothy, absorbed in the conversation of the “whaleback” from Yale, recognized the visitor at the Denning box, and, with an untranslatable grunt, abruptly took his departure, leaving his sister to wonder over the strangeness of his actions.

Once out of the house, his anger blazed freely, and his chauffeur received a lecture on the driving and care of machines that was as undeserved as it was vigorous and emphatic.