and an impudent look that fastened itself unerringly on the weakness in
the person to whom he spoke. Mrs. Jackson, who seemed fastened to her
husband by an invisible leash, had a hunted, resisting quality back of a
certain desperate dash, which she assumed rather than felt in her
attitude toward life. One looked at her curiously and wondered what such
a nature would do in a crisis, with a lurking sense of a woman who
carried with her her own impending tragedy.

As soon as the company had been completed and the incongruity of the
selection had been perceived, a smile of malicious anticipation ran the
rounds, which the hostess cut short by saying:

"Well, now that every one is here, this is the order of the night: You
can quarrel all you want, you can whisper all the gossip you can think
of about one another, but every one is to be amusing! Also every one is
to help with the dinner--nothing formal and nothing serious. We may all
be bankrupt to-morrow, divorced or dead, but to-night we will be
gay--that is the invariable rule of the house!"

Immediately a nervous laughter broke out and the company chattering
began to scatter through the rooms.

Mrs. Kildair, stopping in her bedroom, donned a Watteaulike cooking
apron, and slipping her rings from her fingers fixed the three on her
pincushion with a hatpin.

"Your rings are beautiful, dear, beautiful," said the low voice of Maude
Lille, who with Harris and Mrs. Cheever were in the room.

"There's only one that is very valuable," said Mrs. Kildair, touching