The maddening, but yet—­though she hadn’t much room for any other emotion—­touching thing about the look of him, was the way his face, above the dismal wreck, beamed good-humored innocent affection at her.  It was a big featured, strong, rosy face, and the unmistakable intellectual power of it, which became apparent the moment he got his faculties into action, had a trick of hiding, at other times, behind a mere robust simplicity.

“Good gracious!” he said.  “I didn’t know you were going to have a party.”

It seemed though, he didn’t want to make an issue of that.  He hedged.  “I know you said something about a birthday cake, but I thought it would just be the family.  So instead of dressing, I thought I’d walk down from home.  It takes about the same time.  And then it came on to rain, so I took a street-car—­and got put off.”

It appeared from the way she echoed his last two words that she wanted an explanation.  He was painting with a large brush and a few details got obliterated.

“Got into a row with the conductor, who wanted to collect two fares for one ride, so I walked over to the elevated—­and back, and here I am.”

“Yes, here you are,” said Frederica.

She didn’t mean anything by that.  Already she was making up her mind what she would do with him.  His own suggestion was that he should decamp furtively by the back stairs, the sound of new arrivals to the dinner party warning him that the other way of escape was barred.  Waiters could be instructed to rescue his hat for him, and he could toddle along down-town again.

She didn’t give him time to complete the outline of this masterly stratagem.  “Don’t be impossible, Rod,” she said.  “Don’t you even know whose birthday party this is?”

He looked at her, frowned, then laughed.  He had a great big laugh.

“I thought it was one of the kid’s,” he said.

“Well, it isn’t,” she told him.  “It’s yours.  And those people down there were asked to meet you.  And you’ve got just about seven minutes to get presentable in.  Go into Martin’s bathroom and take off those horrible clothes.  I’ll send Walters in to lay out some things of Martin’s.”

She came up to him and, at arm’s length, touched him with cautious finger-tips.  “And do, please, there’s a dear boy,” she pleaded, “hurry as fast as you can, and then come down and be as nice as you can”—­she hesitated—­“especially to Hermione Woodruff.  She thinks you’re a wonder and I don’t want her to be disappointed.”

“The widdy?” he asked.  “Sure I’ll be nice to her.”

She looked after him rather dubiously as he disappeared in the direction of her husband’s room.

She’d have felt safer about him if he had seemed more subdued as a result of his escapade.  There was a sort of hilarious contentment about him that filled her with misgivings.

Well, they were justified!

But the maddening thing was, she had afterward to admit, that the disaster had been largely of her own contriving.  She had been caught in the net of her own stratagem—­hoist by her own petard.