The evening meal—an excellent one, to which Mr. Cornell did ample justice—was over. Father and mother, as was their custom, had visited the nursery in company, heard the children’s prayers, and kissed them “good-night.” The orderly household had settled down into cheerful quiet that fell like dew upon weary nerves. Susie went to the piano presently and played a pensive nocturne, then sang softly a couple of Arthur’s favorite ballads. The night was blustering, and in the silence succeeding the music, the wedded pair, seated before the soft-coal fire in the back parlor, heard the hurrying tread of passers-by echoing sharply from the frozen stones.

Arthur ended the restful pause. His choice of a theme and the lightness of his tone were heroic.

“Low neck and short sleeves for me to-morrow night, I suppose, old lady? That is to say, claw-hammer, and low-cut vest. It’s lucky I had them made for Lou Wilson’s wedding last winter. There wouldn’t be time to get up the proper rig, and regrets based upon ‘No dress-coat’ would be rather awkward.”

“Decidedly! No man of whatever age should be without one,” rejoined the nascent fashionist. “Some men never sit down to dinner except in evening dress. It must be very nice to live in that way. I like such graceful ceremony in everyday customs.”

Arthur cast about for something neater to say than the dismayed ejaculation bitten off just in time.

“It must help a fellow to feel altogether at his ease in his company accouterments”—inspiration coming in the nick of time. “Most men look, and, judging by myself, feel like newly imported restaurant waiters when decked out in their swallow-tails.”

The conventional “dress coat” is a shrewd test of innate gentlehood. A thoroughbred is never more truly one than when thus appareled. The best it can do for the plebeian, who would prefer to eat his dinner in his shirt-sleeves, is to bring him up to the level of a hotel waiter.

Arthur looked like an unassuming gentleman on the following evening, when he joined his wife below-stairs. If he had not an air of fashion, he had not a touch of the vulgarian. Susie’s mien was, as he assured her, that of a queen. Her head was set well above a pair of graceful shoulders, she carried herself and managed her train cleverly. Arthur had brought her a cluster of pink roses, all of which she wore in her corsage except one bud which she pinned in his buttonhole. He put a careful finger under her chin, and lifted her face to let the full light of the chandelier rain upon it.

“It would have been a pity to keep you all to myself to-night,” he said.

The weather was raw, with menace of rain or snow, but neither of them thought of the extravagance of a carriage. As she had done upon previous festal occasions, the wife looped up the trailing breadths of velvet, and secured them into a “walking length” of skirt with safety pins. Over her gala attire she cast a voluminous waterproof, buttoned all the way down the front. A bonnet would have deranged her coiffure, and she wore, instead, a black Spanish lace scarf knotted under her chin. Slippers and light gloves went in a reticule slung upon her arm.

It lacked five minutes of seven when they alighted from a street-car within a block of the Hitts’ abode. Four carriages were in line before the door, and from these stepped men swathed in long, light ulsters, who assisted to alight and ascend the stone steps apparitions in furred and embroidered opera cloaks that ravished Susie’s wits, in the swift transit of the gorgeous beings from curbstone to the hospitable entrance. A dizzying sensation of unreality, such as one experiences in finding himself unexpectedly upon a great height, seized upon her. Could these people be collected to meet her? Humbled, yet elated, she entered the house, and obeying the directions of the footman at the foot of the stairs, mounted to the dressing room.

Four women in such elaborate toilets that our heroine felt forthwith like a crow among birds-of-paradise, glanced carelessly over their shoulders at her without suspending their chatter to one another, and went on talking and shaking out their draperies. Each, in resigning her wraps to the maids in waiting, stepped forth ready for drawing-room parade. Susie retreated to a corner and began hurriedly to disembarrass herself of her waterproof and to let down her skirt. A maid followed her presently.

“Can I help you?” professionally supercilious.

“Thank you. If you would be so good as to take off my boots, I should be obliged.”

The formula was ill-advised and justified the heightened hauteur of the smart Abigail. With pursed mouth and disdainful finger-tips, she removed the evidences that the wearer had trudged over muddy streets to get here, and as gingerly fitted on the dry slippers. The heat in Susie’s cheeks scorched the delicate skin when she found that the time consumed in her preparations had detained her above-stairs after everybody else had gone down. And Kitty had enjoined punctuality! She met her husband in the upper hall with a distressed look.

“We are horribly late,” she whispered.

“I don’t suppose it makes any difference,” responded he to comfort her. “It’s fashionable to be late, isn’t it?”

“Not at dinners,” she had barely time to admonish him when they crossed the threshold of the drawing room.

Kitty advanced with empressement to meet them, but that they were behind time was manifest from the celerity with which she introduced her husband, and without the interval of a second, the man who was to take Mrs. Cornell in to dinner. Then she whisked Mr. Cornell up to a dried-up little woman in pearl-colored velvet, presented him, asked him to take charge of her into the dining room, herself laid hold of another man’s arm, and signaled her husband to lead the way.

Arthur seldom lost his perceptive and reasoning faculties, and having read descriptions of state dinners and breakfasts, bethought himself that had his wife and himself been in truth chief guests, they would have been paired off with host and hostess. Moreover, although there was a vast deal of talking at table and he did his conscientious best to make conversation with the velvet-clad mummy consigned to him, he had all the time the feeling of being left out in the cold. Nobody addressed him directly in word, or indirectly by glance, and at length, in gentlemanly despair of diverting the attention of his fair companion from her plate to himself, he let her eat in peace and pleased himself by comparing the rosy, piquant face of his wife with the bismuth-and-rouge-powdered visages to the right, left, and front of her. Susie seemed to be getting on swimmingly. The man next to her was chatting gayly, and evidently recognized a responsive spirit in his fair companion. How easily and naturally she met his advances, and how gracefully she fitted into her novel position! What were pomps and vanities to him accorded with her tastes. Again he thought how niggardly would have been the refusal to allow her to take the place she so adorned.

Not even love’s eye penetrated the doughty visor she kept jealously closed throughout the meal. To begin with, she took the wrong fork for the raw oysters! As course succeeded course, the dreadful implement, in style so unlike those left beside other plates, actually grinned at her with every prong. Everybody must be aware of the solecism and deduce the truth that this was her first dinner party. She was sure that she caught the waiters exchanging winks over the fork, and that out of sheer malice, they allowed the tell-tale to lie in full sight. The apprehension that she would eventually be compelled to use the frail absurdity or leave untouched something—meat or game, perhaps—assailed her. While she hearkened to the flippant nothings her escort mistook for elegant small-talk, and plucked up heart for repartee, hot and cold sweats broke out all over her. Had she obeyed inclination that approximated frenzy at times, she would have crept under the table and rolled over on the floor in anguished mortification. If her sleight-of-hand had been equal to the rash adventure, she would have pocketed the wretched bugbear in desperation akin to that which makes the murderer fling far from him the weapon with which the deed was done.

When the ghastly petty torture was ended by the removal of the obnoxious article, and the substitution of one larger, plainer, and less obvious, the poor woman could have kissed the perfunctory hand that lifted the incubus from her soul.

She made other blunders, but none that were so glaring as this. Each was a lesson and a stimulus to perfect herself in the minutiÆ of social etiquette. Before long, she would need no schooling; would lead, instead of following. She would know better another time, too, how to dress herself. Kitty’s gown of cream-colored faille, flounced with lace; the pale blue brocade of one woman, and the pink-and-silver bravery of a third, the maize velvet and black lace of the dowager across the table, and the mauve-and-white marvel of still another toilet, threw her apparel into blackest shade. She caught herself hoping people would think that she was in slight mourning. Besides her allotted attendant nobody at table spoke a word to her, but Kitty shot many a smile at her during the feast, and nodded several times in significance that might be approval or reassurance. Mr. Hitt, a rather handsome man with big, bold eyes, looked hard at her now and then, but did not accost her, even after he grew talkative under the faster flow of wine. His glasses were filled so often and emptied so quickly that Susie wondered to see his wife’s smiling unconcern. Perhaps she had faith in the strength of his brain.

Arthur did not touch one of the five chalices of different shapes and colors flanking his plate, and Susie was weak enough, perceiving that his conduct in this respect was exceptional, to feel mortified by his eccentricity. It was in bad taste, she thought, to offer tacit censure of the practice of host and fellow-guests. To nullify the unfavorable impression of her husband’s singularity, she sipped from each of her glasses, and dipped so deeply into the iced champagne which cooled thirst excited by highly seasoned viands, the heated room and agitation of spirits, that her bloom was more vivid when she arose from dinner than when she sat down. She was quite at ease now, and enjoying, with the zest of an artistic nature, the features of the novel scene.

The tempered light streaming over and repeated by silver, china, and cut-glass; the flower-borders that criss-crossed the lace table-cover laid over rose-colored satin, the superb costumes of the women and the faultless garments of the men; the rapid, noiseless exchange of one delicacy for another, some of the dishes being as new to her as would have been an entrÉe of peacocks’ brains or a salmi of nightingales’ tongues—were fascinating to one whose love of the picturesque and beautiful was a passion. This was the sort of thing she had read of in English novels and American newspapers, the enchanting mode of life for which she had yearned secretly, the atmosphere in which she should have been born.

The return in feminine file to the drawing room of part of the company was a stage of the pageant with which Jane Eyre’s life at Thornhill, and Annie Edwards’ and Ouida’s stories of hospitality at English country houses had made her familiar. She hoped nobody else noticed Arthur’s surprised stare, as the men arose and remained standing, with no movement in the direction of the escaping fair ones. With flutter and buzz and silken rustle, the dames swept through the hall back into the drawing room and disposed themselves upon couches and in easy-chairs, where tiny glasses of perfumed liqueur were handed to them.

“Exactly like a story of Oriental life,” mused entranced Susie.

Now, for the first time, Kitty had the opportunity to show to her school-friend the pointed and peculiar attentions the rhapsodies of yesterday had authorized her to expect. Up to this moment nobody had been introduced to her except the man who took her to dinner.

“I must have you know all these friends of mine,” she purred, taking Susie’s hand in both of hers, and leading her with engaging “gush” up to the mauve-and-white marvel.

“Mrs. Vansittart, this is my dear old school-fellow, Mrs. Cornell, who is going to play something for us now, and after a while, to sing several somethings, and when our audience is enlarged by the return of the men to us lorn women, she will, if properly entreated, give us some of her charming recitations. Ah! you may well look surprised. It is granted to few women to combine so many talents, but when you have heard her, you will see that I do not promise too much.

“Mrs. Roberts!” to the symphony in pink-and-silver—“I bespeak your admiration for my friend and school-crony”—etc., etc., until the blushing dÉbutante was the focus of six pairs of eyes, critical, indifferent, and amiable, and wished that dear Kitty were not so incorrigibly enthusiastic in praising those she loved.

Anyone but a refined novice would have divined at once that the act of passing her around, like a plate of hot cakes, argued one of two things—either that she was a “professional” of some sort, or that her hostess was lamentably ignorant of the law demanding that the one to be honored by an introduction should stand still and have the other party to the ceremony brought to her. Kitty, at least, was no novice, and everybody except her “school-crony” comprehended exactly what the scene meant. Although she did not suspect it, she was on trial when she sat down to the piano, the show-woman beside her, as the guileless guest supposed, to give her affectionate encouragement. The first flash of her fingers across the keys was the signal for general silence, and the clapping of gloved hands at the conclusion of the brilliant overture attested intelligent appreciation. She was not allowed to leave the music stool for half an hour, one piece after another being called for, and the choice of selections putting her on her mettle. Her auditors were used to good music, and the assumption that she would gratify them was a delicate compliment.

Kitty came to her elbow at length with a glass of clear liquid, sparkling with pounded ice.

“Only lime-juice and water,” she whispered, “to clear your voice. I have praised your singing until everybody is wild to hear you.”

Susie smiled happily, glancing over her shoulder with an unconscious and graceful gesture of gratitude; a bow, slight, but comprehensive, she might have but had not copied from a popular prima donna. Another rapid run of the nimble fingers over the responsive ivory, and she glided into the prelude to Gounod’s never-trite song, “Chantez! Riez! Dormez!”

She had sung but a few bars when her ear caught the muffled tread of feet in the hall. A side-glance at the mirror showed her a picture that might have been clipped from her British contes de sociÉtÉ, the grouping of manly faces and fashionable dress coats in the curtained arch, all intent upon herself as the enchantress who held them mute and eager. Electric fire streamed through her veins, her voice soared and swelled as never before; her enunciation, exquisitely pure and clear, carried each word up to the loftiest story of the stilled mansion:

“Ah! riez, ma belle! riez! riez, toujours!”

“Fine, by Jove, now!” cried a big mustached man at Arthur’s side, as the last notes died upon ecstatic ears. “Patti couldn’t have done it better!”

The husband repeated this with other encomiums to the songstress after they got home. He made the tired but animated little woman sit down in an armchair and pulled off her rubbers and unbuttoned her boots in far different fashion from that in which the sleepy Abigail had put them on the feet and helped truss up the train of “the woman who hadn’t come in a carriage like decent folks.”

He had had a stupid evening. He couldn’t make the women talk to him. He was not “a ladies’ man,” and every mother’s daughter of them took in the truth at a glance. The men gabbled over their wine of what did not interest him, of clubs and horse races, and the fluctuations of fancy stocks. He neither smoked nor drank, and was the only man there who did not do both. His wife’s music was to him the only redeeming feature of the occasion, and he would have enjoyed that more in his own parlor. But she was enraptured with everything and full of delightful anticipations. “Everybody had been so nice and kind, and what did ill-natured people mean by saying there was no real sociability among fashionable people? For her part, she believed that the higher one mounted in the social scale the more genuine goodness and refined feeling she would find.” Several of the ladies had promised to call upon her, and, as one said, “to take her in with them.”

Arthur hearkened silently. He had never been able to give her such pleasures, a fact that smote him hard when he saw how zestfully she drank of the newly opened spring. He would not “wet-blanket” her enthusiasm, so did not hint at a discovery made to him by a chance remark of a guest to the host. Invitations for this particular dinner party had been out for ten days.

“Then Susie and I were second fiddles,” inferred the sensible cashier. “I wonder why she asked us at all!”