It was two weeks after Claude Vernon's death.

The Carlton house was lighted brilliantly, and a gay card-party was in progress. The rooms were beautifully decorated with carnations. Great vases of Niphetos and Perle roses stood on the marble mantels. Festoons of costly vines were hung about the walls, and a fountain of perfumed water played in the wide hall. A band of mandolin musicians was stationed in a handsome alcove near the stairway. As one entered this richly adorned mansion, everything pleased the eye, the young people were laughing and jesting, the groups about the different tables were animated groups of happy color; and, if there was another world outside, of vice and sin and need, no hint of such a world was suggested by the surroundings of this party of pleasure-seekers.

Yet there was a cloud on the face of the mistress of all this gayety. Mrs. Carlton herself was evidently disturbed and unhappy. Even her accustomed habit of self-control, that mask which society often compels its slaves to wear, could not conceal her real feelings.

"What is the matter, Louise?" asked one of her friends, Mrs. Lynde, as she stopped by the hostess near the staircase; "are you ill?"

"No, but I'm worried about Inez and her father. A telegram just came, saying they would be here on the one-o'clock train. Of course I feel badly about Claude and all that. It seems almost unfortunate that the party should come so soon after, and all this other——. I feel a little nervous about it; but of course I could not foresee events."

"Of course not. You owe something to society. This will be the event of the season."

"Do you think so?" Mrs. Carlton spoke anxiously, but her face lighted up with the selfish pleasure of a woman who has reached a point where the one great object of her life is to win the distinction of surpassing all other society leaders in social ways.

"There is no doubt of it. See if The Sunday Caterer does not say so." And Mrs. Lynde passed into the next room.

Mrs. Carlton looked pleased; and, as she mingled with the young people, her face seemed to lose its anxious look.

But, when the last game had been played, the refreshments served, the last guest had gone, and she was alone, she betrayed at once the unrest and excitement she had been unable to conceal during a large part of the evening.

It was half-past twelve, and she sat down in the hall reception-room, and waited for her husband and daughter. As she sat there, her mind was busy with thoughts that made her grow increasingly unhappy.

Her husband had been called abroad six months before, and had taken their only child, Inez, with him. She was nineteen years old, and had been studying art at home. When Claude Vernon died, Mrs. Carlton knew that Inez and her father were about to sail for home. Her last letter from them had come from Athens. Mrs. Carlton had not written the news of the tragedy at Judge Vernon's because she knew it would not have time to reach them before they sailed.

This was what troubled her now. It was possible that Inez and Mr. Carlton might reach home in ignorance of Claude's death. Mrs. Carlton suspected that before she went away Inez had come to have more than a girl's fancy for Claude. How far her feelings had gone the mother did not know. How severely the blow would fall on her daughter she was unable to conjecture. But, as she looked around the elegant rooms, heavily perfumed with the evening's adornment, she could not avoid a feeling of dread at what the home-coming of the father and daughter might mean. With it all was also more than a vague self-reproach that this party had followed so close upon the death of Claude Vernon.

She rose and nervously turned out the light in one of the rooms, as if to shut out the sight of the evening's gayety. She even carried several vases of roses into the library, and removed from the hallway some of the carnations that had stood there. As she came back and opened the door, feeling oppressed by the air in the house, a carriage drove up, and the travellers greeted her gayly as they came up the veranda steps.

With the first glance at her daughter, whose face she sought even before that of her husband, Mrs. Carlton knew that she was still ignorant of Claude's death.

"Why, mother, you have been having a gay time during our absence. 'When the cat's away, the mice will play;' isn't that so, father?" cried Inez, as she flung her arms about her mother, while Mr. Carlton said something with a laugh, and kissed his wife as she turned to him from her daughter's embrace.

"I've been having a little company to-night," Mrs. Carlton answered slowly. "Just a few of our friends. It was such a disappointment that you came just too late for it."

"Who has been here, mother?" asked Inez, as she put her arm about her mother and playfully drew her into the dining-room.

"Don't you and Frank want something to eat?" Mrs. Carlton desperately fought against the inevitable disclosure that must come.

"Yes. I'm hungry. We rushed every minute of the way from New York. Didn't even take time to read the papers. What's happened since we've been away? But you have not told us who was here."

Inez, still talking, sat down at the table, and Mrs. Carlton ordered one of the servants to bring in refreshments.

Mrs. Carlton murmured over the names of several people.

Her manner was so agitated that her daughter and husband both noticed it.

"What's the matter, Louise? Are you ill?" asked her husband.

"No, but I'm very tired," exclaimed Mrs. Carlton. She was almost hysterical in her nervousness as she saw no way of escaping the dreadful news. The more she looked at Inez, the more she was struck with a new look on the girl's face. It was the look a girl would carry who had recently come to know what love is.

"Mother," Inez rattled on, "you have not given the whole list of those who were here; was, was—Claude Vernon here?"

The girl looked at her mother with a blush on her face, and then suddenly with an impulsive gesture she said, as she held her hand out over the table: "Mother, I must tell you! Father knows. Claude asked me a week before we sailed from Havre. We are engaged. We—."

She paused, seeing that in her mother's face which drove the color out of her own. Mrs. Carlton sat there in miserable silence. She hoped she might faint. She hoped for anything that would relieve her of the horror of the occasion.

"Mother!" cried Inez, "what is it?" She ran around the table, and Mr. Carlton at the same time came and supported his wife.

"O, it is too terrible! I cannot! I cannot tell it!"

"What! Is it Claude? Is anything the matter?" cried Inez, swiftly imagining evil where she loved the most.

"Yes! Yes! O my God! O child! Claude is—."

"He is dead!" said Inez calmly, but in a strange voice.

Mrs. Carlton threw her arms about her daughter and sobbed hysterically. When she finally recovered to realize what the news meant, Inez lay unconscious in her mother's arms. She had fainted.

Mr. Carlton took her and laid her down, and telephoned for a doctor. As he came back into the room, his wife flung her arms on the table, weeping aloud. She was unmindful of the fact that one of her hands had struck a vase of roses and upset it. The flowers lay across her arm, and the vase lay in broken fragments across the table.

It was the morning after the party at the Carltons', and Rev. Howard Douglass was talking with his wife about the subject which now absorbed nearly all his thought.

"If we could only get the society people interested in the plan! O, if we could only get the money that is used simply for parties and entertainments, we could carry out the plan of redeeming Freetown with every prospect of success."

He spoke anxiously, and his wife listened sympathetically.

"Now imagine," he continued, "a woman like Mrs. Carlton ready to throw the weight of her social influence on the side of our attempt to uplift and change Freetown. She is a leader in social circles. She has money and friends and leisure and ability. And yet she spends her time and strength in the regular round of parties and receptions year after year. The money spent on her party last night might go a long way toward building the foundation of our social-settlement hall."

"That's true," Mrs. Douglass said thoughtfully. Then after a pause she went on. "Howard, somehow I have felt lately as if a change was to come over that woman's life. Have you thought that Inez Carlton was beginning to think a good deal of Claude Vernon before she went abroad?"

"No," replied Mr. Douglass, somewhat startled.

"I have. If the girl comes home to receive the news of his death, it will change her life and her mother's possibly."

"I have never thought of such a thing. The woman seems wholly given over to her social life. It seems to me like an awful waste of God's time and money to spend them as she does all these years. If we could in some way make her see the needs of Freetown! We need money and influence to do what ought to be done over there."

He was still talking when the bell rung. He was near the stairs, on his way to his morning's work in his study.

He opened the door, and a messenger handed him a note. It read as follows:—

"My Dear Mr. Douglass:—Mrs. Carlton and Inez would like to see you. Can you call at the house this morning? We are in trouble.

Very truly yours,
"Frank L. Carlton."

The minister handed the note to his wife without a word.

"Perhaps the Lord is leading her in some way of his own," she said, and the words sounded in Howard Douglass's ears repeatedly as he hurried toward the Carlton mansion, not knowing why he had been summoned there.