Mrs. Porter presented her cowboy simply as ``Mr. Clay, of whom I
spoke to you,'' with a significant raising of the eyebrows, and
the cowboy made way for King, who took Miss Langham in. He
looked frankly pleased, however, when he found himself next to
her again, but did not take advantage of it throughout the first
part of the dinner, during which time he talked to the young
married woman on his right, and Miss Langham and King continued
where they had left off at their last meeting. They knew each
other well enough to joke of the way in which they were thrown
into each other's society, and, as she said, they tried to make
the best of it. But while she spoke, Miss Langham was
continually conscious of the presence of her neighbor, who piqued
her interest and her curiosity in different ways. He seemed
to be at his ease, and yet from the manner in which he glanced up
and down the table and listened to snatches of talk on either
side of him he had the appearance of one to whom it was all new,
and who was seeing it for the first time.

There was a jolly group at one end of the long table, and they
wished to emphasize the fact by laughing a little more
hysterically at their remarks than the humor of those witticisms
seemed to justify. A daughter-in-law of Mrs. Porter was their
leader in this, and at one point she stopped in the middle of a
story and waving her hand at the double row of faces turned in
her direction, which had been attracted by the loudness of her
voice, cried, gayly, ``Don't listen. This is for private
circulation. It is not a jeune-fille story.'' The
debutantes at the table continued talking again in steady,
even tones, as though they had not heard the remark or the first
of the story, and the men next to them appeared equally