Elise's dancing party was an affair to be remembered—an affair that is remembered. It deserved to be an unusual occasion, for in arranging it Elise was conscious of being in an unusual frame of mind. She was in some way disposed to be so perfectly even-handed in her dispensations. She directed the three invitations to Mr. Evans Rutledge, Captain George St. Lawrence Howard and Senator Joseph Richland with her own hand and with almost one continuous stroke of the pen. She took this batch of three invitations as a separate handful and placed them together in the basket for the mail. She assigned to each of these gentlemen one dance with herself, and one only, in the programme of the formal first half of the evening. She appointed as attendants for the eleven o'clock collation Mr. Rutledge to Mrs. Hazard, Captain Howard to Helen, and Senator Richland to Alice Mackenzie—the fiancée of Donald MacLane. In everything she was judicially impartial. She played no favourites.
Her plans carried through charmingly, and after dancing through the card a delighted lot of guests sat down to the light luncheon, though three men in the party, despite all their gallant attentions to the women beside them, were using half of their brains at least in planning for the catch-as-catch-can hour and a half that was to follow. Elise had smiled upon them equally and tormentingly, and not a man of them but felt that the briefest little five minutes tête-à-tête might do magical things.
"Well," said Lola, after she and Rutledge had effervesced in a few minutes of commonplaces and conventionalities, "is your money still on the Englishman?"
"No," said Rutledge, "I've quit gambling."
"Lost your sporting nerve?"
"No, not that; but a man who bets against himself deserves to lose, and I can't afford to lose."
"But your self-respect?" laughed Lola.
"Now Miss—ah—Mrs. Hazard, don't jump on a fellow when he's down. Self-respect is nothing less than an abomination when it comes between a man and a girl like—that,—and besides, she didn't mean it that way."
"Oh, didn't she?"
"No, she didn't, and she's just the finest, dearest woman in the whole wide—unmarried state!"