"AH, Mrs. Dressel, we were on the lookout for you--waiting for the curtain to rise. Your friend Miss Brent? Juliana, Mrs. Dressel's friend Miss Brent----"

Near the brilliantly-striped marquee that formed the axis of the Gaines garden-parties, Mr. Halford Gaines, a few paces from his wife and daughters, stood radiating a royal welcome on the stream of visitors pouring across the lawn. It was only to eyes perverted by a different social perspective that there could be any doubt as to the importance of the Gaines entertainments. To Hanaford itself they were epoch-making; and if any rebellious spirit had cherished a doubt of the fact, it would have been quelled by the official majesty of Mr. Gaines's frock-coat and the comprehensive cordiality of his manner.

There were moments when New York hung like a disquieting cloud on the social horizon of Mrs. Gaines and her daughters; but to Halford Gaines Hanaford was all in all. As an exponent of the popular and patriotic "good-enough-for-me" theory he stood in high favour at the Hanaford Club, where a too-keen consciousness of the metropolis was alternately combated by easy allusion and studied omission, and where the unsettled fancies of youth were chastened and steadied by the reflection that, if Hanaford was good enough for Halford Gaines, it must offer opportunities commensurate with the largest ideas of life.

Never did Mr. Gaines's manner bear richer witness to what could be extracted from Hanaford than when he was in the act of applying to it the powerful pressure of his hospitality. The resultant essence was so bubbling with social exhilaration that, to its producer at any rate, its somewhat mixed ingredients were lost in one highly flavoured draught. Under ordinary circumstances no one discriminated more keenly than Mr. Gaines between different shades of social importance; but any one who was entertained by him was momentarily ennobled by the fact, and not all the anxious telegraphy of his wife and daughters could, for instance, recall to him that the striking young woman in Mrs. Dressel's wake was only some obscure protégée, whom it was odd of Effie to have brought, and whose presence was quite unnecessary to emphasize.

"Juliana, Miss Brent tells me she has never seen our roses. Oh, there are other roses in Hanaford, Miss Brent; I don't mean to imply that no one else attempts them; but unless you can afford to give _carte blanche_ to your man--and mine happens to be something of a specialist...well, if you'll come with me, I'll let them speak for themselves. I always say that if people want to know what we can do they must come and see--they'll never find out from _me_!"

A more emphatic signal from his wife arrested Mr. Gaines as he was in the act of leading Miss Brent away.

"Eh?--What? The Amhersts and Mrs. Ansell? You must excuse me then, I'm afraid--but Westy shall take you. Westy, my boy, it's an ill-wind.... I want you to show this young lady our roses." And Mr. Gaines, with mingled reluctance and satisfaction, turned away to receive the most important guests of the day.

It had not needed his father's summons to draw the expert Westy to Miss Brent: he was already gravitating toward her, with the nonchalance bred of cosmopolitan successes, but with a directness of aim due also to his larger opportunities of comparison.

"The roses will do," he explained, as he guided her through the increasing circle of guests about his mother; and in answer to Justine's glance of enquiry: "To get you away, I mean. They're not much in themselves, you know; but everything of the governor's always begins with a capital letter."

"Oh, but these roses deserve to," Justine exclaimed, as they paused under the evergreen archway at the farther end of the lawn.

"I don't know--not if you've been in England," Westy murmured, watching furtively for the impression produced, on one who had presumably not, by the great blush of colour massed against its dusky background of clipped evergreens.

Justine smiled. "I _have_ been--but I've been in the slums since; in horrible places that the least of those flowers would have lighted up like a lamp."

Westy's guarded glance imprudently softened. "It's the beastliest kind of a shame, your ever having had to do such work----"

"Oh, _had_ to?" she flashed back at him disconcertingly. "It was my choice, you know: there was a time when I couldn't live without it. Philanthropy is one of the subtlest forms of self-indulgence."

Westy met this with a vague laugh. If a chap who was as knowing as the devil _did_, once in a way, indulge himself in the luxury of talking recklessly to a girl with exceptional eyes, it was rather upsetting to discover in those eyes no consciousness of the risk he had taken!

"But I _am_ rather tired of it now," she continued, and his look grew guarded again. After all, they were all the same--except in that particular matter of the eyes. At the thought, he risked another look, hung on the sharp edge of betrayal, and was snatched back, not by the manly instinct of self-preservation, but by some imp of mockery lurking in the depths that lured him.

He recovered his balance and took refuge in a tone of worldly ease. "I saw a chap the other day who said he knew you when you were at Saint Elizabeth's--wasn't that the name of your hospital?"

Justine assented. "One of the doctors, I suppose. Where did you meet him?"

Ah, _now_ she should see! He summoned his utmost carelessness of tone. "Down on Long Island last week--I was spending Sunday with the Amhersts." He held up the glittering fact to her, and watched for the least little blink of awe; but her lids never trembled. It was a confession of social blindness which painfully negatived Mrs. Dressel's hint that she knew the Amhersts; if she had even known _of_ them, she could not so fatally have missed his point.

"Long Island?" She drew her brows together in puzzled retrospection. "I wonder if it could have been Stephen Wyant? I heard he had taken over his uncle's practice somewhere near New York."

"Wyant--that's the name. He's the doctor at Clifton, the nearest town to the Amhersts' place. Little Cicely had a cold--Cicely Westmore, you know--a small cousin of mine, by the way--" he switched a rose-branch loftily out of her path, explaining, as she moved on, that Cicely was the daughter of Mrs. Amherst's first marriage to Richard Westmore. "That's the way I happened to see this Dr. Wyant. Bessy--Mrs. Amherst--asked him to stop to luncheon, after he'd seen the kid. He seems rather a discontented sort of a chap--grumbling at not having a New York practice. I should have thought he had rather a snug berth, down there at Lynbrook, with all those swells to dose."

Justine smiled. "Dr. Wyant is ambitious, and swells don't have as interesting diseases as poor people. One gets tired of giving them bread pills for imaginary ailments. But Dr. Wyant is not strong himself and I fancy a country practice is better for him than hard work in town."

"You think him clever though, do you?" Westy enquired absently. He was already bored with the subject of the Long Island doctor, and vexed at the lack of perception that led his companion to show more concern in the fortunes of a country practitioner than in the fact of his own visit to the Amhersts; but the topic was a safe one, and it was agreeable to see how her face kindled when she was interested.

Justine mused on his question. "I think he has very great promise--which he is almost certain not to fulfill," she answered with a sigh which seemed to Westy's anxious ear to betray a more than professional interest in the person referred to.

"Oh, come now--why not? With the Amhersts to give him a start--I heard my cousin recommending him to a lot of people the other day----"

"Oh, he may become a fashionable doctor," Justine assented indifferently; to which her companion rejoined, with a puzzled stare: "That's just what I mean--with Bessy backing him!"

"Has Mrs. Amherst become such a power, then?" Justine asked, taking up the coveted theme just as he despaired of attracting her to it.

"My cousin?" he stretched the two syllables to the cracking-point. "Well, she's awfully rich, you know; and there's nobody smarter. Don't you think so?"

"I don't know; it's so long since I've seen her."

He brightened. "You _did_ know her, then?" But the discovery made her obtuseness the more inexplicable!

"Oh, centuries ago: in another world."

"_Centuries_--I like that!" Westy gallantly protested, his ardour kindling as she swam once more within his social ken. "And Amherst? You know him too, I suppose? By Jove, here he is now----"

He signalled a tall figure strolling slowly toward them with bent head and brooding gaze. Justine's eye had retained a vivid image of the man with whom, scarcely three years earlier, she had lived through a moment of such poignant intimacy, and she recognized at once his lean outline, and the keen spring of his features, still veiled by the same look of inward absorption. She noticed, as he raised his hat in response to Westy Gaines's greeting, that the vertical lines between his brows had deepened; and a moment later she was aware that this change was the visible token of others which went deeper than the fact of his good clothes and his general air of leisure and well-being--changes perceptible to her only in the startled sense of how prosperity had aged him.

"Hallo, Amherst--trying to get under cover?" Westy jovially accosted him, with a significant gesture toward the crowded lawn from which the new-comer had evidently fled. "I was just telling Miss Brent that this is the safest place on these painful occasions--Oh, confound it, it's not as safe as I thought! Here's one of my sisters making for me!"

There ensued a short conflict of words, before his feeble flutter of resistance was borne down by a resolute Miss Gaines who, as she swept him back to the marquee, cried out to Amherst that her mother was asking for him too; and then Justine had time to observe that her remaining companion had no intention of responding to his hostess's appeal.

Westy, in naming her, had laid just enough stress on the name to let it serve as a reminder or an introduction, as circumstances might decide, and she saw that Amherst, roused from his abstraction by the proffered clue, was holding his hand out doubtfully.

"I think we haven't met for some years," he said.

Justine smiled. "I have a better reason than you for remembering the exact date;" and in response to his look of surprise she added: "You made me commit a professional breach of faith, and I've never known since whether to be glad or sorry."

Amherst still bent on her the gaze which seemed to find in external details............