how about one night early next week, say--Thursday, if that
would suit--?"

Chas and Hen agreed that it would do perfectly. Pot-luck at seven. Sorry
she wouldn't walk on with them. Bully day for Shanks's mares. And
so forth....

Carlisle, an eye-catching figure in her calling costume (assuming that
this is what it was) glanced after her poor relations from the Byrds'
vestibule, and was amused by her thought. How exactly like the Cooneys'
lively cheek (and nobody else's) to propose a country walk with them as
a perfectly satisfactory substitute for an hour's _tête-à-tête_ with
Hugo Canning!




VII

How the Great Parti, pursued or pursuing to Cousin Willie
Kerr's apartment, begins thundering again.


Bellingham Court was the very newest of those metropolitan-looking
apartment hotels which the rapid growth and complicating "standards" of
the city was then calling into being. It was on the most fashionable
street, Washington, in one of the most fashionable parts of it. And it
had bell-boys, onyxine vestibules, and hot and cold water in nearly
every room.