It so happened that Myrtle met Master Byles Gridley walking with Mr. Gifted Hopkins the day before the party.  She longed to have a talk with her old friend, and was glad to have a chance of pleasing her poetical admirer.  She therefore begged her hostess to invite them both to her party to please her, which she promised to do at once.  Thus the two elegant notes were accounted for.

Mrs. Clymer Ketchum, though her acquaintances were chiefly in the world of fortune and of fashion, had yet a certain weakness for what she called clever people.  She therefore always variegated her parties with a streak of young artists and writers, and a literary lady or two; and, if she could lay hands on a first-class celebrity, was as happy as an Amazon who had captured a Centaur.

“There’s a demonish clever young fellow by the name of Lindsay,” Mr. Livingston Jenkins said to her a little before the day of the party.  “Better ask him.  They say he ’s the rising talent in his line, architecture mainly, but has done some remarkable things in the way of sculpture.  There’s some story about a bust he made that was quite wonderful.  I’ll find his address for you.”  So Mr. Clement Lindsay got his invitation, and thus Mrs. Clymer Ketchum’s party promised to bring together a number of persons with whom we are acquainted, and who were acquainted with each other.

Mrs. Clymer Ketchum knew how to give a party.  Let her only have carte blanche for flowers, music, and champagne, she used to tell her lord, and she would see to the rest,—­lighting the rooms, tables, and toilet.  He needn’t be afraid:  all he had to do was to keep out of the way.

Subdivision of labor is one of the triumphs of modern civilization.  Labor was beautifully subdivided in this lady’s household.  It was old Ketchum’s business to make money, and he understood it.  It was Mrs. K.’s business to spend money, and she knew how to do it.  The rooms blazed with light like a conflagration; the flowers burned like lamps of many-colored flame; the music throbbed into the hearts of the promenaders and tingled through all the muscles of the dancers.

Mrs. Clymer Ketchum was in her glory.  Her point d’Alenyon must have spoiled ever so many French girls’ eyes.  Her bosom heaved beneath a kind of breastplate glittering with a heavy dew of diamonds.  She glistened and sparkled with every movement, so that the admirer forgot to question too closely whether the eyes matched the brilliants, or the cheeks glowed like the roses.  Not far from the great lady stood Myrtle Hazard.  She was dressed as the fashion of the day demanded, but she had added certain audacious touches of her own, reminiscences of the time when the dead beauty had flourished, and which first provoked the question and then the admiration of the young people who had a natural eye for effect.  Over the long white glove on her left arm was clasped a rich bracelet, of so quaint an antique pattern that