A small, thin girl with large, vivid eyes, a blue dress and collar-bones, who was zooming up-stairs two steps at a time, ran head on into Bill, who was coming slowly down. Her head struck him at the waist line and Bill sat down on a step. She immediately sat beside him.

"Isn't this the funniest party!" she exclaimed. "Did I hurt you?"

"It is, and you didn't," answered Bill.

He had never seen her before.

"I haven't seen a soul I know, except mother, who brought me here."

"Neither have I," said Bill, glancing down-stairs at the crush.

"Heaven knows why they invited us. Mother says that father used to know somebody in the family years and years ago. She says they're really all right, too. We just came because things have been so terribly dull in town that we've been sitting home screaming. Do you ever feel like screaming?"

"Right now."

"Go ahead," she advised. "I'm sure it will be all right. Anyhow, we came. They have perfectly lovely things to eat. And the house is so beautiful. But it's funny, just the same. Did you know there was a bishop here?"

"I heard so."

"There is; he shook hands with me. He was so solemn; it seemed like shaking hands with God. And there are piles of middle-aged people here, aren't there? I don't mean there aren't any young ones, for of course there are—just millions. But there are more middle-aged ones. Still, the music is just wonderful. Who is the queer old lady who wears the little cap?"

"I believe she lives here," said Bill.

"Well, she's perfectly dear. She patted me on the head and asked me if I was Henry Kingsley's little girl. I told her I was; I didn't want to disappoint her. But I'm not; I'm Arnold Gibbs's little girl. And—somebody's else's."

She chirped her way through the conversation like a voluble bird.

"Engaged," she added, holding up a finger. "But he's not here, so it's all right for me to sit on the stairs with you. Here's something else that's funny: I haven't met the man they're giving the party for. Isn't that a scream? Somehow, we got in late, or something or other. He's awfully high-brow; oh, yes, I heard that the first thing. You're not high-brow, are you?"

Bill shook his head.

"It's comfortable to know you're not," she said. "Whenever I meet an intellect I make a holy show of myself. Did you know that he's sailing for Australia to-morrow? Uhuh! He's going there to study something or other. They told me that down-stairs, too. Let's see; what is it he's going to study? Crustaceans! That's it. What are they? Negroes?"

"I'm not up on them," said Bill. "Maybe."

"Anyhow, he's going to study them. And then he's going to write volumes and volumes about them. He's a scientist. Isn't it funny to be at a scientific party? And—oh, yes; it seems there's been an affair in his life. He's going away to bury his heart while he's studying the thingamajigs. Did you ever hear of anything so romantic?"

Bill turned his head for a better survey of the young person with the astonishing information.

"Where did you pick up all the info?" he inquired, as carelessly as he could.

"From a young man who knows all about him," answered Arnold Gibbs's little girl.

"What sort of a young man?"

"Oh, a nice one. He's kind of thin and pale and he has baby-stare eyes."

"Does he have funny wrinkles at the corners of them when he laughs?" asked Bill.

"That's exactly what he has!" she exclaimed. "How beautifully you describe. Are you a detective? They have them at parties, you know."

"No, I'm not a detective. I—er—just happen to know him, I think."

Bill wiped his forehead with a handkerchief and stared straight ahead.

"Where did you meet him?" he asked, after a pause.

"Oh, down-stairs. You can meet anybody at a party, you know. It's perfectly all right. If people weren't perfectly all right they wouldn't be invited. He dances beautifully."

"You mean to say——"

"Twice. We danced out in the conservatory. It seems he's bashful; he wouldn't go into the big room for fear he'd bump me into people or step on their feet. He isn't sure of himself. But I don't see why, because he dances excruciatingly well. But he wouldn't believe I was engaged, so I had to run away from him."

"I don't quite get that."

"Kissed me," she sighed. "Oh, well, a party's a party. But I wouldn't let him do it again."

"Would you like to have me lick him?" asked Bill, his voice slightly trembling.

"Lick him? What in the world for? Because he didn't know? Why, what a queer person you are!"

Bill felt that he was, indeed, a very queer person. He was the owner of a party at which his valet had danced twice with one of his guests and kissed her as an additional token of democracy! He did not know whether to rage or laugh. But—oh, if Aunt Caroline ever heard of it! Or his secretary!

"Perhaps you'd like to dance with me," she added.

Bill was startled. But he mumbled an affirmative.

"Let's go, then," and she trotted down-stairs ahead of him, as eager as a kitten chasing a paper ball.

In the lower hall Bill felt a touch on his arm and turned to face Mary Wayne.

"May I interrupt just a moment?" she asked. Then to the girl: "I know you'll excuse me. I won't keep Mr. Marshall a minute."

The small one in the blue dress gave a frightened stare at Bill, shrieked and fled into the crowd.

"Have I offended her?" asked Mary, anxiously. "I'm sorry. I don't seem to place her, although I've been trying to remember all the guests."

"That's Arnold Gibbs's little girl," explained Bill. "She's been telling me things about my party and now she's just discovered who I am."

"Oh! And you let the poor child go on and on, of course. How awfully mean of you. Will you never learn?" Mary frowned at him with all the severity of a sister. "But that's not what I wanted to speak to you about. You've been hiding—and you mustn't! People are asking where you are. Please—please don't spoil things. It's your party and you've just got to be present at it."

Bill made a face.

"I'm tired of being exhibited," he growled. "I'm tired of meeting people who say: 'So this is little Willie Marshall. Mercy, how you've grown! I haven't seen you since you wore knickerbockers. But you're a Marshall, sure enough; you're the image of your father.' I tell you, I'm sick of it!"

"But it's only for once," pleaded Mary. "Now they've met you they won't do it again. But what I want you to do now is to go in and dance with some of the young people. There are some lovely girls in there, and they're just sitting around. Come; I'll introduce you, if you haven't already met them."

But Bill hung back. He did not want to dance at all; he was grateful because his secretary had inadvertently saved him from Arnold Gibbs's little girl. There was woe in his eyes as he looked at Mary. There was every sound reason why his expression should have been different, for Mary, in her party gown from Aunt Caroline, inspired anything but woe. Even she herself was conscious of the fact that she looked nice. Bill was becoming slowly conscious of it himself, although he could not drive the gloom out of his soul.

"Come," she said, peremptorily, hooking her arm in his.

"I'll dance with you," he offered.

"That won't do at all. I'm not a guest."

"If I can't dance with you I won't dance with anybody."

She shook her head impatiently.

"Please be sensible, Mr. Marshall."

"You first," declared Bill stubbornly.

"No! It's not the thing for you to do at all. Perhaps later; but——"

"We'll go out in the conservatory and dance."

"But nobody is dancing out there."

"Come on, then."

Bill started, with her arm prisoned in a grip that forbid escape.

"Well, if I dance with you," said Mary, as she was dragged along, "then afterward you must promise to——"

"Maybe."

They stood at the entrance to the conservatory, Mary still scolding in an undertone. Suddenly she pinched his arm violently and pointed. An animated couple were swinging into view from behind a patch of palms. His valet—and Arnold Gibbs's little girl!

"Oh, Heavens!" said Mary.

She fled, with Bill trailing in her wake.

Even at that, it was not a bad party. It was somewhat overwhelmed with descendants, it is true; descendants of relatives and of old friends and of persons who were intimates of Bill Marshall's grandfather. But some of the descendants were young and were managing to have a good time. Aunt Caroline had her own circle, a sort of little backwater, into which descendants eddied and tarried a bit, and from which they eddied out again. In fact, Aunt Caroline had a party within a party. Her permanent guest seemed to be the bishop; once caught in the backwater he never escaped into the stream. He stayed there with Aunt Caroline, while the descendants whirled gently around them. But the bishop was amiable in his dusty way, while his dignity was unimpeachable. He had made an impression on Arnold Gibbs's little girl, and what more could any bishop do?

Nell Norcross, known to the household and its guests as "Miss Wayne," did not prove to be such a reliance as Mary hoped. Perhaps it was because she was a convalescent and did not feel equal to the ordeal of plunging boldly into affairs; perhaps it was due to a natural diffidence among strangers. But whatever it was, Mary discovered that she was almost wholly upon her own resources; that Nell was not rising capably to the emergency; that she edged off into the middle distance or the background with irritating persistence; that, in short, Nell, with all her wealth of experience and all her highly attested worth as an expert, was unable to adapt herself to the situation so well as the amateur secretary. Nell even admitted this shortcoming to Mary.

"I feel strange because I'm being called by your name," she offered as an explanation.

"Mercy," said Mary. "How about me?"

"But you've become accustomed to it, my dear. Never mind; I'm sure I'll brighten up as soon as the sculptor comes."

"There! I'd forgotten him. Oh, I hope he doesn't fail. I must find Mr. Marshall and ask him if he's heard anything. Have you seen him? I'll hunt around for him. I suppose he's trying to hibernate again."

And once more Mary started on the trail of Bill Marshall, for the double purpose of dragging him back into society and inquiring as to the whereabouts of the signor from Italy.

Pete Stearns was in purgatory. He had been sent for by Aunt Caroline, discovered by a servant and haled to the backwater, into which he was irresistibly sucked.

"Bishop," said Aunt Caroline, "this is the young man of whom I spoke."

The bishop took Pete's hand, pressed it gently and retained it.

"My young friend," he said, "you are on the threshold of a career that offers you priceless opportunities. Have you looked well into your heart? Do you find yourself ready to dedicate your whole life to the work?"

"Sir," replied Pete, with a shake in his voice, "it is my ambition to become nothing less than a bishop."

"There! I told you so," said Aunt Caroline.

"Have you a sound theological foundation?" asked the bishop, still holding Pete's hand.

"I should say he had!" exclaimed Aunt Caroline. "What was it you were telling me about yesterday, Peter? The cat—cat——"

"The catechetical lectures of Cyril of Jerusalem," said Pete smoothly. "From that we go on to the doctrines of Arius of Antioch."

"That would be going backward," commented the bishop.

"Huh! Oh, certainly, sir, strictly speaking. But we have been skipping around a bit, if I may say it, sir. Hitting the high—that is, sir, taking up such matters as interest us. Theistic philosophy, ethical rationalism, Harnack's conception of monophysticism, Gregory of Nyssa, Anselm of Canterbury——"

"Who wrote the 'Canterbury Tales,'" interrupted Aunt Caroline. "Wasn't that what you told me, Peter?"

But Peter was hurrying on.

"Miss Marshall has been good enough, sir, to show some small interest in my work; it has been a great encouragement to me. I may say that in the field of philosophical and speculative theology——"

"Stick to the dogmatic, my friend," advised the bishop—"the dogmatic and the special dogmatic. Be sound, whatever you are. Now, here is a test I apply to every young man; it shows the trend of his thought, it tells me whether he has embarked upon the proper course; give me, my young friend, an outline of your views on diophysite orthodoxy."

Pete coughed and lifted his glance to the ceiling.

"Confound the old coot!" he was telling himself. "He has me out on a limb. What will I do? How in——"

And then—rescue! A small person in a blue dress floated into the backwater.

"Oh, here's my nice man," she said, as she possessed herself of Pete's arm. "Bishop, let go of his hand. He's going to teach me that new vamp thing. Hurry, teacher; the music started ages ago."

And as Pete was towed out of the backwater by Arnold Gibbs's little girl the bishop and Aunt Caroline stared after him.

"I greatly fear," observed the bishop, "that our young friend is somewhat in the grip of predestinarianism."

"Bishop, you frighten me," said Aunt Caroline. "But I'll take it up with him in the morning."

When another partner had invaded the conservatory and claimed the little girl in the blue dress, Pete Stearns sighed.

"There goes the only one who doesn't suspect me," he said. "The only real little democrat in the place. Although it's only ignorance in her case, of course. Oh, well, it's not so bad; I'm doing better than Bill at that."

Somebody tapped him on the arm.

"I've been waiting for an opportunity," said Nell Norcross. "I do not wish to make a scene. But I understand that you are Mr. Marshall's valet. Is that correct?"

Pete looked her in the eye and speculated.

"I think I am not mistaken," said Nell, after she had waited sufficiently for an answer. "May I ask, then, if it is customary for valets to dance with the guests of their employers?"

"Madam," said Pete, "may I in turn ask by what authority you question me?"

"There is nothing mysterious about my position in this house," replied Nell. "I am here as an assistant to Miss—Norcross." It was annoying to stumble over the name. "Miss Marshall understands perfectly; I am here at her request. I think you will do a very wise thing if you retire to the gentlemen's dressing-room and remain there. Am I clear?"

It was Pete's first glimpse at close hand of the social secretary's aide. It did not bore him in the least. He might have described her pallor as "interesting," had he been prone to commonplaces. Her eyes, he thought, were even better than those of Arnold Gibbs's little girl; they were not so vivid, perhaps, yet more deeply luminous.

"Let us debate this matter," he said. "Will you sit down?"

"Certainly not!"

"Aw, let's."

He spoke with a disarming persuasion, but Nell refused to be seated.

"Will you go up-stairs at once?" she demanded.

Pete placed a finger against his lips and glanced from side to side. "Suppose," he said, "I were to tell you a great secret?"

"Go at once!"

"Suppose we exchange secrets?" he whispered.

That startled her. What did he mean? Did he know anything—or suspect?

"Suppose——" He stopped, turned his head slightly and listened. "Something is happening," he said. "Let's run."

And before Nell Norcross knew it she was running, her hand in his, for all the world like Alice in the Looking Glass Country dashing breathlessly along, with the Red Queen shouting: "Faster! Faster!"