irginian? His name was
Stuart Farquaharson."

"Do you know where he lives--or anything else about him?"

"Why, no--that is, nothing in the social sense." Miss Andrews smiled
quietly as she added, "I've read some of his stories in the magazines."

"All right. Find out where he lives and invite him in Merton's place.
Don't let _him_ slip--he interested me and that species is almost
extinct."

As Miss Andrew jotted down the name, Mrs. Heath read the surprised
expression on her face, and it amused her to offer explanation of her
whim.

"You're wondering why I'm going outside the lines and filling the ranks
with a nobody? Well, I'll tell you. I'm sick of these people who are all
sick of each other. The Farquaharsons were landed gentry in Virginia
when these aristocrats were still grinding snuff. Aren't we incessantly
cudgeling our brains for novelty of entertainment? Well, I've discovered
the way. I'm going to introduce brains and manners to society. I daresay
he has evening clothes and if he hasn't he can hire them."

Decidedly puzzled, Stuart Farquaharson listened to the message over the
telephone later in the day, but his very surprise momentarily paralyzed
his power of inventing a politely plausible excuse, so that he hung up
the receiver with the realization that he had accepted an invitation
which held for him no promise of pleasure.

It happened that Louis Wayne, who had by sheer persistency seized the
outer fringes of success, had come up with a new manuscript to read and
was now sitting, with a pipe between his teeth, in Stuart's morris
chair.

"Sure, go to it," he exclaimed with a grin, as Stuart bewailed his lack
of a ready excuse. "It'll be a bore, but it will make you appreciate
your return to the companionship of genius."

"The Crags" was that palatial establishment up the Hudson where the
Reinold Heaths hold court during the solstices between the months at
Newport and the brief frenzy of the New York season, and the house party
which introduced Stuart Farquaharson to Society with a capital S was
typical. One person in the household still had, like himself, the
external point of view, and her ditties threw her into immediate contact
with each new guest.

"Miss Andrews," he laughed, when the social secretary met him shortly
after his arrival, "I'm the poor boy at this frolic, and I'm just as
much at my ease as a Hottentot at college. When I found that I was the
only man here without a valet, I felt-