The afternoon was passed in leisurely fashion. The modern way of entertaining guests is to let them entertain themselves. They loafed, smoked, played bottle-pool and later on there was a court tennis match between young Dorsey-Martin and the marker, which drew a gallery and applause. Nina Jaffray tried it next with Bibby Worthington and though she had played but once, got the knack of the “railroad” service and succeeded in beating him handily, amid derisive remarks for Bibby from the nets. A plunge in the pool followed; after which the ladies went up for a rest before dressing for dinner. Gallatin saw little of Nellie Pennington during the afternoon, and though he wanted to question her to satisfy the alarming curiosity which she had aroused, she avoided speaking to him alone, and when he insisted on following her about, fled to her room. She knew the effect of her revelations upon his mind and she didn’t propose that it should be spoiled by an anti-climax.

The dinner hour arrived and with it the Ledyards and their house-guests, Angela Wetherill, Millicent Reeves, the Perrines, Jane Loring, Percy Endicott, Coleman Van Duyn and some of the Warrenton folk. Dinner tables, each with six chairs, had been laid in the dining-room and hall, but so perfect was the machinery of the great establishment that the influx of guests made no apparent difference in its orderly procedure. There were good-natured[298] comments on Bibby Worthington’s defeat in the afternoon, congratulations for Nina Jaffray on her dual achievement, uncomplimentary remarks about Virginia clay, flattering ones about Virginia hospitality and the usual discussion about breeds of hounds and horses, back of which was to be discovered the ancient rivalry between the Cedarcroft and Apawomeck hunt clubs.

Nellie Pennington directed the destinies of the table at which Gallatin sat. Nina Jaffray was on his right, Larry Kane beyond her, Coleman Van Duyn on Mrs. Pennington’s left and Jane Loring opposite. Nothing could possibly have been arranged which could conspire more thoroughly to lacerate the feelings of those assembled. Gallatin saw Jane halt when she was directed to her seat, he heard Nina’s titter of delight beside him, caught Larry Kane’s glare and Coley Van Duyn’s flush, but the stab of Jane’s eyes hardened him into an immediate gayety in which Nina was not slow to follow. Mrs. Pennington having devised the situation, calmly sat and proceeded to enjoy it. Good breeding, she knew, made a fair amalgam of the most heterogeneous elements, but she gave a short sigh when they were all seated and each began talking rapidly to his neighbor, Jane to Larry Kane, Nina to Phil and herself to Coley. Pangs in every heart except her own! It was the perfection of social cruelty, and she enjoyed it hugely, aware that two, perhaps three, of the persons at the table might never care to speak to her again, but stimulated by the reflection, whether for bad or good, something must come out of her crucible. The first shock of dismay over, it was apparent that her dinner partners had decided to make the best of the situation. The table was small, and general conversation inevitable, but she chose for the present to let matters take their course, trusting to Nina to provide[299] that element of uncertainty which was to make the plot of her comedy fruitful.

Indeed, Nina seemed in her element, and, when a sudden silence fell, broke the ice with a carelessness which showed her quite oblivious of its existence.

“So nice of you, Nellie, to have us all together! I was just saying to Phil that dinners at small tables can be such a bore, if the people are not all congenial.”

“Jolly, isn’t it?” laughed Nellie. “Jane, why weren’t you hunting this morning?”

“Oh, Coley didn’t want to,” she said quickly, her rapier flashing in two directions.

Nellie Pennington understood.

“You are getting heavy, aren’t you, Coley?” she asked sweetly. “Didn’t Honora have anything up to your weight?”

“I didn’t ask,” returned Van Duyn peevishly. “Dreadful bore, huntin’——”

“Hear the man!” exclaimed Nellie. “You’re spoiling him, Jane.”

“There’s no hope for any creature who doesn’t like hunting,” put in Nina in disgust.

“Except the fox,” said Gallatin.

“And there’s not much for him when Nina rides,” laughed Larry Kane. “Lord, Nina, but you did take some chances to-day.”

“I believe in taking chances,” put in Miss Jaffray calmly. “The element of uncertainty is all that makes life worth while. Nothing in the world is so deadly as the obvious.”

“You’ll be kept busy avoiding it,” sighed Nellie. “I’ve been.”

“Oh, I simply ignore it,” she returned, with a quick gesture. “Jane won’t approve, of course; but the unusual,[300] the daring, the unconventional are the only things that interest me at all.”

“They interest others when you do them, Nina,” Jane replied smiling calmly.

“Of course, they do. And you ought to be grateful.”

“We are. I’m sure we’d be very dull without you. Personally I’m a bromide.”

“Heaven forbid! The things that are easiest are not worth trying for. Whether your game is fish, fowl or beast (and that includes man), try the most difficult. The thrill of delight when you bag your game is worth all the pains of the effort. Isn’t it, Nellie?”

“I don’t know,” the other replied, between oysters. “I bagged Dick, but then I didn’t have to try very hard. I suppose I would have bagged him just the same. A woman can have any man she wants, you know.”

“The trouble is,” laughed Larry Kane, “that she doesn’t know what she wants.”

“And, if she does, Larry,” said Gallatin slowly, “he’s usually the wrong one.”

Nina laughed.

“His sex must be blamed for that. The right men are all wrong and the wrong men are all right. That’s my experience. ‘Young saint, old devil; young devil, old saint.’ You couldn’t provide me with a better recommendation for a good husband than a bad reputation as a bachelor. And think of the calm delights of regeneration!”

“You’ll have no difficulty in finding him, Nina,” said Jane.

“I’m afraid there’s no hope for me,” laughed Kane. “I, for one, am too good for any use.”

“Too good to be true,” sniffed Nina.

[301]

“Or too true to be interesting,” he added, below his breath.

Nellie Pennington, having led her companions into deep water, now turned and guided them into the shoals of the commonplace. Jane Loring’s eyes and Phil Gallatin’s had met across the table. The act was unavoidable for they sat directly opposite each other and, though each looked away at once, the current established, brief as it was, was burdened with meaning. Gallatin read a hundred things, but love was not one of them. Jane read a hundred things any one of which might have been love, but, as far as she knew, was not. Gallatin caught the end of a gaze she had given him while he was talking to Nina, and he fancied it to be a kind of indignant curiosity, not in the slightest degree related to the scorn of her surprise at being detected in the midst of her inspection. Gallatin found her face thinner, which made her eyes seem larger and the shadows under them deeper. He had seen fresh young beauty such as hers break and fade during one season in New York, but it shocked him a little to find these marks so evident in so short a time. It was as though a year, two years even, had been crowded into the few weeks since he had seen her last, as though she had lived at high tension, letting nothing escape her that could add to the sum of experience. Her eyes sparkled, and on her cheeks was a patch of red clearly defined, like rouge, but not rouge, for it came and went with her humor. She had grown older, more intense, more fragile, her features more clearly carved, more refined and—except for the hard little shadows at the corners of her lips—more spiritual.

He glanced at the heavy, bovine face of Coley Van Duyn beside her and wondered. Coley had been drinking freely and his face was flushed, his laugh open-mouthed and louder than Nellie Pennington’s humor seemed to warrant.[302] How could she? God! How could she do it?

A blind rage came upon Gallatin, a sudden wave of intolerance and rebellion, and he clenched his fists beneath the table. This man drank as much as he liked and when he pleased. He was the club glutton. He ate immoderately and drank immoderately, because he liked to do it, and because that was his notion of comfort. Not, as had been the case with Gallatin, because he had not been able to live without it. Van Duyn could stop drinking when he liked, when he had had enough, when he didn’t want any more. He drank for the mere pleasure of drinking. Gallatin bit his lip and stared at his untouched wine glasses. Pleasure? With Gallatin it had been no pleasure. It had been a medicine, a desperate remedy for a desperate pain, a poisonous medicine which cured and killed at the same time.

“Phil!” Nina’s voice sounded suddenly at his ear. “Are you ill?”

“Not in the least.”

“You haven’t listened to a word I’ve been saying, and it was so interesting.”

He laughed.

“What were you thinking of?”

“My sins.”

“Then I don’t wonder that you looked so badly.”

But it was clear that she understood him, for after a short silence she spoke of other things.

The dinner having progressed to the salad course, visiting was in order, and the guests sauntered from table to table, exchanging chairs and partners. Jane Loring was one of the first to take advantage of this opportunity to escape, and found a seat at Honora Ledyard’s table between Bibby Worthington and Percy Endicott.

Nellie Pennington watched her departure calmly, for[303] she had learned what she had set out to learn. All women, no matter how youthful, are clever at dissimulation, but the art being common to all women, deceives none. And Jane, skillful though she had been in hiding her thoughts from Gallatin, deceived neither Nellie Pennington nor Nina Jaffray.

Dinner over, Nellie Pennington followed the crowd to the gunroom. The married set were already at their auction and somebody beckoned to her to make a four, but she refused. On this night she had a mission. She wandered from group to group, keeping one eye on Jane and the other on Phil, until the music began, when with one accord, all but the most devoted of the bridge-players returned to the hall, from which the furniture had been cleared, and where the polished wax surface shone invitingly. Mrs. Pennington waited until the waltz was well under way and saw Jane Loring circling the room safely with Larry Kane, when she went into the library alone. Her thought had crystallized into a definite plan.

It was at the end of the third dance when Jane, on the arm of Percy Endicott was on ............