“What Wayne doesn’t know won’t hurt him,” said his wife.  “Sh!  Here they come!” And the conversation terminated abruptly, with much laughter.

Mrs. Burgoyne’s dinner-party dispersed shortly after ten o’clock, so much earlier than was the custom in Santa Paloma that none of the ordered motor-cars were in waiting.  The guests walked home together, absorbed in an animated conversation; for the gentlemen, who were delighted to be getting home early, delighted with a dinner that, as Wayne Adams remarked, “really stood for something to eat, not just things passed to you, or put down in dabs before you,” and delighted with the pleasant informality of sitting down in daylight, were enthusiastic in their praise of Mrs. Burgoyne.  The ladies differed with them.

“She knows how to do things,” said Parker Lloyd.  “Old Von Praag himself said that she was a famous dinner-giver.”

“I don’t know what you’d say, Wayne,” said Mrs. Adams patiently, “if I asked people to sit down to the dinner we had to-night!  Of course we haven’t eight millions, but I would be ashamed to serve a cocktail, a soup—­I frankly admit it was delicious—­steaks, plain lettuce salad, and fruit.  I don’t count coffee and cheese.  No wines, no entrees; I think it was decidedly queer.”

“I wish some of you others would try it,” said Willard White unexpectedly.  “I never get dinners like that, except at the club, down in town.  The cocktail was a rare sherry, the steaks were broiled to a turn, and the salad dressing was a wonder.  She had her cheese just ripe enough, and samovar coffee to wind up with—­what more do you want?  I serve wine myself, but champagne keeps you thirsty all night, and other wines put me to sleep.  I don’t miss wine!  I call it a bang-up dinner, don’t you, Parker?”

Parker Lloyd, with his wife on his arm, felt discretion his part.

“Well,” he said innocently selecting the one argument most distasteful to the ladies, “it was a man’s dinner, Will.  It was just what a man likes, served the way he likes it.  But if the girls like flummery and fuss, I don’t see why they shouldn’t have it.”

“Really!” said Mrs. White with a laugh that showed a trace of something not hilarious, “really, you are all too absurd!  We are a long way from the authorities here, but I think we will find out pretty soon that simple dinners have become the fad in Washington, or Paris, and that your marvelous Mrs. Burgoyne is simply following the fashion like all the rest of us.”

CHAPTER X

Barry had murmured something about “rush of work at the office” when he came in a few minutes late for Mrs. Burgoyne’s dinner, but as the evening wore on, he seemed in no hurry to depart.  Sidney was delighted to see him really in his element with the Von Praags, father and son, the awakened expression that was so becoming to him on his face, and his curiously complex arguments stirring the old man over and over again to laughter.  She had been vexed at herself for feeling a little shyness when he first came in; the unfamiliar evening dress and the gravity of his handsome face had made him seem almost a stranger, but this wore off, and after the other guests had gone these four still sat laughing and talking like the best of old friends together.