fawned upon, with deceiving and being deceived, with bluffing and being
bluffed, with splurging, with pretending, with every trick and artifice
and sham and chicanery that society and politics know, or can fancy.

Harleston was familiar with it all for too many years even to accord it
a glance of contemptuous indifference--when he had anything else to
occupy his mind; and just now his mind was on a lady in black with
three American Beauties on the gown.

He went slowly down the steps to the main corridor and joined the
buzzing, kaleidoscopic crowd.

Somewhere on the floor above, an orchestra was playing for the
_dansant_; and the music came fitfully through the chatter and
confusion. He nodded to some acquaintances, bowed formally to others,
shook hands when it could not be avoided; all the while progressing
slowly down the corridor in search of three red roses on a black gown.

And near the far end he saw, for an instant through a rift in the crowd,
the three roses on a black gown, but not the face above them; the next
instant the rift closed. However, he knew now that she was here and
where to find her, and he made his way through the press toward where
she was waiting for him.

Then the crowd suddenly opened--as crowds do--and he saw, on the same
side of the corridor and scarcely ten feet apart, two slender women in
black and wearing red roses; one was Mrs. Winton, the other he had never
seen.

It brought him to a sharp pause. Then he smiled. Ranleigh was right!