presenting Mrs. Sarah Joy Snyder seemed to her like an affair of
moment. For lack of something greater to hate and rival, she hated
and rivalled Mrs. Slade. For lack of something big over which to
reign, she wished to reign over Fairbridge and the Zenith Club. Mrs.
Slade's perfectly-matched drawing-room took on the semblance of a
throne-room, in which she had seen herself usurped.

Then she thought of the young clergyman, even as he was thinking of
her. She knew perfectly well how he had been trapped, but she failed
to see the slightest humour in it. She had no sense of humour. She
saw only the additional triumph of Mrs. Slade in securing this rather
remarkable man at the Zenith Club, something which she herself had
never been able to do. Von Rosen's face came before her. She
considered it a handsome face, but no man's face could disturb her.
She held her virtue with as nervous a clutch as she held up her fine
gown. To soil either would be injudicious, impolitic, and she never
desired the injudicious and impolitic.

"He is a handsome man," she said to herself, "an aristocratic-looking
man." Then the telephone bell close beside her divan rang, and she
took up the receiver carefully, not moving her head, sat up, and put
her delicate lips to the speaking tube.

"Hello," said a voice, and she recognised it as Von Rosen's although
it had an agitated, nervous ring which was foreign to it.

"What is it?" she said in reply, and the voice responded with
volubility, "A girl, a young Syrian girl, is at my home. She is in a
swoon or something. We cannot revive her. Is the doctor at home? Tell
him to hurry over, please. I am Mr. von Rosen. Tell him to hurry. She