"Ah, but that was last night, my dear. And this is to-night. And I have seen your Miss Tony. That alters everything, even your seating arrangements. Change me, Carlotta."
Carlotta laughed and capitulated. Alan's highhanded tactics always amused her.
"Not that you deserve it," she said. "Don't be too nice to him, Tony. He is not a nice person at all."
So it happened that Tony found herself at dinner between Ted's friend, and her own, Hal Underwood, and this strange, impossible, arbitrary, new personage who had hypnotized her into unwonted silence at their first meeting.
She had recovered her usual poise by this time, however, and was quite prepared to keep Alan Massey in due subjection if necessary. She did not like masterful men. They always roused her own none too dormant willfulness.
As they sat down he bent over to her.
"You are glad I made Carlotta put us together," he said, and this, too, was no question, but an assertion.
Tony was in arms in a flash.
"On the contrary, I am exceedingly sorry she gave in to you. You seem to be altogether too accustomed to having your own way as it is." And rather pointedly she turned her pretty shoulder on her too presuming neighbor and proceeded to devote her undivided attention for two entire courses to Hal Underwood.
But, with the fish, Hal's partner on the other side, a slim young person in a glittering green sequined gown, suggesting a fish herself, or, at politest, a mermaid, challenged his notice and Tony returned perforce to her left-hand companion who had not spoken a single word since she had snubbed him as Tony was well aware, though she had seemed so entirely absorbed in her own conversation with Hal.