adjacent side streets and the open space in front of the house
were crowded with champing horses and smartly veneered carriages.
All with whom the Cowperwoods had been the least intimate came
early, and, finding the scene colorful and interesting, they
remained for some time. The caterer, Kinsley, had supplied a small
army of trained servants who were posted like soldiers, and carefully
supervised by the Cowperwood butler. The new dining-room, rich
with a Pompeian scheme of color, was aglow with a wealth of glass
and an artistic arrangement of delicacies. The afternoon costumes
of the women, ranging through autumnal grays, purples, browns, and
greens, blended effectively with the brown-tinted walls of the
entry-hall, the deep gray and gold of the general living-room, the
old-Roman red of the dining-room, the white-and-gold of the
music-room, and the neutral sepia of the art-gallery.

Aileen, backed by the courageous presence of Cowperwood, who, in
the dining-room, the library, and the art-gallery, was holding a
private levee of men, stood up in her vain beauty, a thing to
see--almost to weep over, embodying the vanity of all seeming
things, the mockery of having and yet not having. This parading
throng that was more curious than interested, more jealous than
sympathetic, more critical than kind, was coming almost solely to
observe.

"Do you know, Mrs. Cowperwood," Mrs. Simms remarked, lightly, "your
house reminds me of an art exhibit to-day. I hardly know why."

Aileen, who caught the implied slur, had no clever words wherewith
to reply. She was not gifted in that way, but she flared with
resentment.