e for Miss Moore's welfare. Quite apart from my wishes
where she is concerned, nothing could be worse for her than an
entanglement with an adventurer like Storm--a man from the dark, you
might call him, if you chose to say nothing worse. And already the
Goodriches are talking--made jokes in the automobile yesterday about the
two who had stayed at home to "write."

How girls manage to squeeze such a lot of clothes into small space, I
don't know. Anyhow, Miss Patty and the Goodriches and the two young
married women didn't appear in the same dresses they had worn for the
dance at Easthampton. I never saw Patty look so pretty, though as a rule
I don't like green, and to me it's unlucky. I shall never let her have
another green dress when we are married, becoming though the colour may
be. Storm was looking after the Grayles-Grice when the rest of us went
into the clubhouse, so I knew the dance Patty was to "remember" couldn't
be the first. I asked her to sit it out with me, and she hesitated a
minute. "Has some one else got ahead of me?" I asked. She said no, but
she had been thinking she wouldn't give the first dance to any one; she
would "sit with Molly and Jack." It shot into my head that she didn't
want Storm to come in and find her with me, knowing he wastes no love on
yours truly. I was mad, but I kept cool. "All right, let me sit with you
all three," I said. "I've got something important to tell you that can't
very well wait."

I saw by her eye what she thought the "something important" was, so I
hurried to disabuse her mind. "It's about Storm," I explained. "I don't
know whether you'd care to save him serious trouble, but you can do so
if we talk the thing over while there's time."

"Of course I would care to!" she said. "He's been very kind to Larry and
me."

In my opinion it was the other way round, but I didn't stop to argue. I
took her into the ballroom, having previously found out that Mrs. Sam de
Silverley hadn't arrived yet. I was counting on her being a bit late.
She generally is--for the sake of the effect.

When we were sitting down together, Patty and I (all the rest of our lot
dancing, except the Winstons), I didn't waste a second in firing off my
first gun. "I want to ask you frankly, Miss Moore," I began, "to tell me
if you know whether Storm intends to be present at this dance to-night."

"But yes!" she answered in that funny French way she has, that would be
difficult to put on paper if one want