Then Janet drew Robert through the doorway and, as she joined the procession of celebrants, her heightened senses quite transfigured her. This fact was not lost on Cornelia or Mazie.
"What a pretty pair!" said the latter mockingly. "Just watch them doing that snappy stuff with the eyes."
Mazie had stayed behind for a moment to give Cornelia a parting shot.
"You'd better change your mind, Corny. A swell chance there is of Robert coming back here now that Janet's got him hooked. Come along, dearie, do. See here, I'll give you a tip. You can rile a good many more people by going to the ball than you can by staying here."
Cornelia shook her head disdainfully at this satire on her motives. Yet disdain was not her strongest emotion, Mazie's shaft having struck too deep for an answer.
III
Towards midnight, the Outlaws' Ball in the old Murray Hill Lyceum on 34th Street had almost hit its stride. Two bands, an Hawaiian Jazz and the Kips Bay Roughnecks, furnished the music, and what with the crash and blare of instruments, the dazzle of costumes, the clouds of confetti, and the swirl of dancers, masked and unmasked, the dense motley crowd appeared to be squeezing the last ounce of pleasure out of its mad adventure in search of "a good time."
Janet's appearance in her Spanish robes with the genuine Castilian mantilla, the high tortoise shell comb, and the silk Andalusian shawl flaming brilliantly against her dark hair, was one of the sensations of the evening. Robert's somber monk's cowl at her side subtracted nothing from this sensation. He conducted her through the mazes of the upper dancing floor and then brought her back to the gorgeous gypsy tent that had been set up on the floor below.
There she began to play the gypsy fortune teller with as much subtlety as the professional exertions of the musical Roughnecks permitted.
Robert stood near the tent as a sort of self-constituted watchman and bodyguard extraordinary. As John Barleycorn was being liberally dispensed in the refreshment room, a number of tipsy masqueraders soon turned up, and some of these roistered into Janet's tent despite Robert's efforts to fend them off.