Mrs. De Peyster, Matilda trailing, headed for a booth of marble and railing of dull gold—­the latter, possibly, only bronze, or gilded iron—­within which stood a gentleman in evening dress, with the bearing of one no lower than the first secretary of an embassy.

“A suite,” Mrs. De Peyster remarked briefly across the counter, “with sitting-room, two bed-rooms and bath.”

“Certainly,” said the distinguished gentleman.  “I have a most desirable suite on the fifteenth floor, with a splendid outlook over the park.”

“That will do.”

“The name, please?” queried the gentleman, reaching for a pen.

“Mrs. David Harrison,” invented Mrs. De Peyster.

“When do your employers wish to occupy the suite?” pursued the courtly voice of the secretary of the embassy.

“Our employers!” repeated Mrs. De Peyster.  And then with wrathful hauteur:  “The apartment is for ourselves.  We desire to occupy it at once.”

The gentleman glanced her up and down; then up and down his eyes went over Matilda, just behind her.  There was no doubting what Matilda was; and since the two were patently the same, there could be no doubt as to what Mrs. De Peyster was.

“I’m sorry—­but, after all, the suite is not available,” he said courteously.

“Not available?” cried Mrs. De Peyster.  “Why not?”

“I prefer to say no more.”

“But I insist!”

“Since you insist—­the Dauphin does not receive servants, even of the higher order, as regular guests.”  The hotel clerk’s voice was silken with courtesy; there was no telling with what important families these two were connected; and it would not do to give offense.  “We receive servants only when they accompany their employers, and then assign them to the servants’ quarters.  You yourself must perceive the necessity of this,” he added hastily, seeing that Mrs. De Peyster was shaking, “to preserve the Dauphin’s social tone—­”

“The servants’ quarters!” gasped Mrs. De Peyster.  “You mean—­”

“You’ll excuse me, please,” interrupted the clerk, and with a bow ended the scene and moved to the rear of the office where he plainly busied himself over nothing at all.

Mrs. De Peyster, quivering, gulping, glared through her veil at him.  A hotel clerk had turned his back on her!  And this mere clerk had dared refuse her a room! Refuse her! Because she, she, Mrs. De Peyster had not the social tone!

Nothing like it had ever happened to her before.

Her desire to annihilate that clerk with the suave ambassadorial look, and the Dauphin, and all therein and all appertaining thereunto, was mounting toward explosion, when Matilda clutched her arm.

“It’s awful, ma’am,—­but let’s go,” she whispered.  “What else can we do?”

Yes, what else could they do?  Mrs. De Peyster’s wrath was still at demolitory pressure, but she saw the sense in that question.  The next moment the two figures, duplicates of somberness, one magnificently upright, the other shrinking, were re-passing over the muting rugs, through the corridor of noble marble, by the lackeys between whose common palms and the hands of patrician guests was the antiseptic intermediary of white thread gloves.