can get out of it will be at my expense! Rosamund is a perfect cat!"

* * * * *

He had sent for his cab, which, no doubt, was in line somewhere, wedged
among the ranks of carriages stretching east and west along the snowy
street; and he stood on the thick crimson carpet under the awning while
it was being summoned. A few people like himself were not staying for
the dance; others who had dined by prearrangement with other hostesses,
had now begun to arrive, and the confusion grew as coach and brougham
and motor came swaying up through the falling snow to deposit their
jewelled cargoes of silks and laces under the vast awning picketed by
policemen and lined with fur-swathed grooms and spindle-legged
chauffeurs in coats of pony-skin.

The Cornelius Suydams, emerging from the house, offered Selwyn tonneau
room, but he smilingly declined, having a mind for solitude and the
Lenox Club. A phalanx of débutantes, opera bound, also left. Then the
tide set heavily the other way, and there seemed no end to the line of
arriving vehicles and guests, until he heard a name pronounced; a
policeman warned back an approaching Fiat; and Selwyn saw Mrs. Ruthven,
enveloped in white furs, step from the portal.

She saw him as he moved back, nodded, passed directly to her brougham,
and set foot on the step. Pausing here, she looked about her, right and
left, then over her shoulder straight back at Selwyn; and as she stood
in silence evidently awaiting him, it became impossible for him any
longer to misunderstand without a public affront to her.

When he started toward her she spoke to her maid, and the latter moved