nded them out with august
white gloves.

"Pay the fare, Matilda," ordered Mrs. De Peyster.

Mrs. De Peyster's bills, when she had a servant with her, were always
paid by the attendant. Matilda did so, out of a square black leather
bag that was never out of Matilda's fingers when Matilda was out of
the house; it seemed almost a flattened extension of Matilda's hand.

They entered the Dauphin, passing other white-gloved lackeys, each a
separate perfection of punctiliousness; and passed through a marble
hallway, muted with rugs of the Orient, and came into a vast high
chamber, large as a theater--marble walls and ceiling, tapestries,
moulded plaster and gilt in moderation, silken ropes instead of
handrails on the stairways, electric lights so shaded that each looked
a huge but softly unobtrusive pearl. The chamber was pervaded by, was
dedicated to, splendid repose.

Mrs. De Peyster, Matilda trailing, headed for a booth of marble and
railing of dull gold--the latter, possibly, only bronze, or gilded
iron--within which stood a gentleman in evening dress, with the
bearing of one no lower than the first secretary of an embassy.

"A suite," Mrs. De Peyster remarked briefly across the counter, "with
sitting-room, two bed-rooms and bath."

"Certainly," said the distinguished gentleman. "I have a most
desirable suite on the fifteenth floor, with a splendid outlook over
the park."

"That will do."

"The name, please?" queried the gentleman, reaching for a pen.

"Mrs. David Harrison," invented Mrs. De Peyster.

"When do your employers wish to occupy the suite?" pursued the courtly
voice of the secretary of the embassy.

"Our employers!" repeated Mrs. De Peyster. And then with wrathful
hauteur: "The apartment is for ourselves. We desire to occupy it at
once."

The gentleman glanced her up and down; then up and down his eyes went
over Matilda, just behind her. There was no doubting what Matilda was;
and since the two were patently the same, there could be no doubt as
to what Mrs. De Peyster was.

"I'm sorry--but, after all, the suite is not available," he said
courteously.

"Not available?" cried Mrs. De Peyster. "Why not?"

"I prefer to say no more."

"But I insist!"

"Since you insist--the Dauphin does not receive servants, even of the
higher order, as regular guests." The hotel clerk's voice was silken
with courtesy; there was no telling with what important families these
two were connected; and it would not