Eileen straightened up stiffly, and Selwyn's teasing smile and his
offered hand in adieu completed her indignation.

"Oh, good-bye! No, I won't shake hands. There's your cab, now. I wish
you'd take Austin, too; Nina and I are tired of dining with the
prematurely aged."

"Indeed, we are," said Mrs. Gerard; "go to your club, Austin, and give
me a chance to telephone to somebody under the anesthetic age."

Selwyn departed, laughing, but he yawned in his cab all the way to
Fifty-third Street, where he entered in the wake of the usual laggards
and, surrendering hat and coat in the cloak room, picked up the small
slim envelope bearing his name.

The card within disclosed the information that he was to take in Mrs.
Somebody-or-Other; he made his way through a great many people, found
his hostess, backed off, stood on one leg for a moment like a reflective
water-fowl, then found Mrs. Somebody-or-Other and was absently good to
her through a great deal of noise and some Spanish music, which seemed
to squirt through a thicket of palms and bespatter everybody.

"Wonderful music," observed his dinner partner, with singular
originality; "_so_ like Carmen."

"Is it?" he replied, and took her away at a nod from his hostess, whose
daughter Dorothy leaned forward from her partner's arm at the same
moment, and whispered: "I _must_ speak to you, mamma! You _can't_ put
Captain Selwyn there because--"