Carrie was summoned away then by a soft purring little buzzer and
directed Agnes to help us dress. I must say that we made very nice
looking tourists in our tan suits and green veils. Agnes had the suits
pressed until there were no wrinkles left in them and arranged our
veils with a practised hand. All the while we were dressing we could
hear automobiles driving up under the porte-cochere, and guests
arriving, and we were in a fever of anticipation. Strains of music
floated up from below, together with the subdued hum of many voices. We
judged from the direction of the sounds that the ballroom was on the
first floor.

It was after ten o'clock when we were finally ready and Carrie appeared
in the door for us. She took us down another stairway into a vast hall
filled with paintings and statuary, where a man in a dark blue suit and
silver braid (I suppose that's what you'd call a footman in livery),
stood stiffly as the statues around him. Carrie said something to him
in a low tone (I presume she was explaining our presence without cards
of invitation, such as he was collecting from the other guests), and he
looked at us with an impassive eye and nodded his head. He was a very
homely man with an exceedingly red nose with one bright blue vein
running across it that gave him somewhat of a singular appearance. I
remember thinking that if I were his mistress I should set him to
working in the garden where nobody could see him, instead of posting
him in the front hall to admit the guests.

After Carrie had turned us over to the Nose with the Vein she went up-
stairs again and the man slid back a door on the left side of the hall.
We found ourselves in the ballroom and in the midst of a scene as
bewildering as it was gorgeous. Of course, our first thought had been