Carriages, in stately procession, disembarked their precious freight; the lift, laden with youth and beauty, shot up and down like a glorious Jack-in-the-Box; over the corridors poured a stream of beautiful maidens and handsome gentlemen, to separate for their several tiring-rooms, and soon to remeet in the palm-decked vestibule.  Within the great room, couples were already dancing; Fetzy’s Hungarians on a dais, concealed behind a wild thicket of growing things, were sighing out a wonderful waltz; rows of white-covered chairs stood expectantly on all four sides of the room; and the chaperones, august and handsome, stood in a stately line to receive and to welcome.  And to them came in salutation Charles Gardiner West and, beside him, the lady whom he honored with his hand that evening, Miss Millicent Avery, late of Maunch Chunk, but now of Ours.

They made their devoirs to the dowagers; silently they chose their seats, which he bound together with a handkerchief in a true lovers’ knot; and, Fetzy’s continuing its heavenly work, he put his arm about her without speech, and they floated away upon the rhythmic tide.

At last her voice broke the golden silence:  “I feel enormously happy to-night.  I don’t know why.”

The observation might seem unnoteworthy to the casual, but it carried them all around the room again.

“Fortune is good to me,” said he, as lightly as he could, “to let me be with you when you feel like that.”

He had never seen her so handsome; the nearness of her beauty intoxicated him; her voice was indolent, provocative.  She was superbly dressed in white, and on her rounded breast nodded his favor, a splendid corsage of orchid and lily-of-the-valley.

“Fortune?” she queried.  “Don’t you think that men bring these things to pass for themselves?”

They had made the circle on that, too, before West said:  “I wonder if you begin to understand what a power you have of bringing happiness to me.”

He looked, and indeed, for the transient moment, he felt, like a man who must have his answer, for better or worse, within the hour.  She saw his look, and her eyes fell before it, not wholly because she knew how to do that to exactly the best advantage.  Few persons would have mistaken Miss Avery for a wholly inexperienced and unsophisticated girl.  But how was she to know that that same look had risen in the eyes of West, and that same note, obviously sincere, broken suddenly into his pleasant voice, for many, many of the fair?

The music died in a splendid crash, and they threaded their way to their seats, slowly and often stopped, across the crowded floor.  Many eyes followed them as they walked.  She was still “new” to us; she was beautiful; she was her own young lady, and something about her suggested that she would be slightly unsafe for boys, the headstrong, and the foolish; rumor made her colossally wealthy.  As for him, he was the glass of fashion and the mould