They sat down twelve at table.  Beside Carlisle’s own little coterie, there were present Mr. and Mrs. Allison Payne, who, before they had retired to the country to bring up their children, had been conspicuous in that little old-school set which included Mrs. Berkeley Page:  simple-mannered, agreeable people these were, who were always very pleasant when you met them, but whom you never really seemed to know any better.  And Mrs. Payne, who was Hugo’s first cousin, had kissed Carlisle when they met in the tiring-room, and hoped very prettily that they were going to be friends.  Still more open was the gratulation of the somewhat less exclusive.  Papa had been detained by business, and J. Forsythe Avery, having been asked at the last moment to fill his place, had broken up another dinner-table to be seen at Canning’s.  Unquestionably he must have recognized a doughty rival, but Carlisle, who sat next him, easily saw how high she had shot up in his pink imagination.  As for dear Mats Allen, her late funeral note had quite vanished in loving rapture, with just that undercurrent of honest envy so dear to the heart of woman.

“He’s simply mad about you, Cally!  The way he looked and looked at you!...  And he never even listened to poor little me, chatting away beside him, and frightened out of my wits all the time, he’s so lordly.”

This was when dinner was over, and the guests were strolling from the little dining-room for coffee in the winter garden.  Cally smiled.  She had observed that most of her best friend’s time had gone, not to chatting to Hugo, but to lavishing her delicious ignorance and working her telling optic system on J. Forsythe Avery, who was so evidently now to be released for general circulation....

Mats seized the moment to inquire, simply, whether she or Evey was to be maid of honor; and Cally then laughed merrily.

“Perhaps we shall have it done by a justice of the peace....  Mats, you’re the greatest little romancer I ever saw.  How you got it into your pretty noddle that Mr. Canning has the faintest interest in me I can’t imagine....”

Willie Kerr, too, paid his tribute, having momentarily withdrawn himself from mamma, whose loyal escort he was once more.  Willie was a shade balder than last year, when he had played his great part in Cally’s life and then sunk below her horizon; a shade more rotund; a shade rosier in the face.  But he was as genial as ever, being well lined now with a menu to his own taste and an exceptionally good champagne.

“Knew he’d come back, Carlisle,” said Willie, standing before a florid oil-painting he had lured her into a parlor to look at.  “Said to Eva Payne in September—­no, August, one Sunday it was—­’Canning’ll be back soon as she gets home,’ s’I.  ’Don’t know what happened, that trouble in the spring.  Don’t want to know—­none of my business.  But mark my words, Eva Payne,’ s’I, ‘Hugo Canning’ll be back.’  Fact,” said Willie, grinning cordially.  “Funny how I knew.  And don’t forget, Carlisle, m’dear, ’twas your Uncle Cosmo did it all!  Hey?  Remember that tea in my apartments?  Always keep a spare room ready for Uncle Cosmo, and, by gad, I’ll come and spend my summers with you.”