Robert Kimberly leaving the two men, walked downstairs again. The rooms were filling with the overflow from the dance. They who had come were chiefly of the married set, though boys and girls were among them.
After the manner of those quite at home, the dancers, still wearing their flower leis, were scattered in familiar fashion about small tables where refreshment was being served.
At one end of the music room a group applauded a clever young man, who, with his coat cuffs rolled back, was entertaining with amateur sleight-of-hand.
At the other end of the room, surrounded by a second group, Fritzie Venable played smashing rag-time. About the tables pretty, overfed married women, of the plump, childless type, with little feet, fattening hands, and rounding shoulders, carried on a running chatter with men younger than their husbands.
A young girl, attended at her table by married men, was trying to tell a story, and to overcome unobserved, her physical repugnance to the whiskey she was drinking.
In the dining-room Lottie Nelson was the centre of a lively company, and her familiar pallor, which indulgence seemed to leave untouched, contrasted with the heightened color in Dora Morgan's face.
Robert Kimberly had paused to speak to some one, when Fritzie Venable came up to ask a question. At that moment Arthur and Dolly De Castro, with Alice on Dolly's left, entered from the other end of the room. Kimberly saw again the attractive face of a woman he had noticed dancing with Arthur at the Casino. The three passed on and into the hall. Kimberly, listening to Fritzie's question, looked after them.
"Fritzie, who is that with Dolly?" he asked suddenly.
"That is Mrs. MacBirney."
"Mrs. MacBirney?" he echoed. "Who is Mrs. MacBirney?"