she had never heard of it. Wilbur dared not smoke. All that
wretched evening they sat there. The situation was too much for
Margaret, that past mistress of situations, and her husband was
conscious of a sensation approaching terror and also wrath whenever
he glanced at the figure in sumptuous white, the figure expressing
sulkiness in every feature and motion. Margaret was unmistakably
sulky as the evening wore on and nobody came except this other girl
of whom she took no notice at all. She saw that she was pretty, her
hair badly arranged and she was ill-dressed, and that was enough for
her. She felt it to be an insult that these people had invited her
and asked nobody to meet her, Martha Wallingford, whose name was in
all the papers, attired in this wonderful white gown. When Annie
Eustace arose to go, she arose too with a peremptory motion.

"I rather guess I will go to bed," said Martha Wallingford.

"You must be weary," said Margaret.

"I am not tired," said Martha Wallingford, "but it seems to me as
dull here as in South Mordan, Illinois. I might as well go to bed and
to sleep as sit here any longer."

When Margaret had returned from the guest room, her husband looked at
her almost in a bewildered fashion. Margaret sank wearily into a
chair. "Isn't she impossible?" she whispered.

"Did she think there was a dinner party?" Wilbur inquired
perplexedly.

"I don't know. It was ghastly. I did not for a moment suppose she
would dress for a party, unless I told her, and it is Emma's night
off and I could not ask people with only Clara to cook and wait."

Wilbur patted his wife's shoulder comfortingly. "Never mind, dear,"
he said, "when she gets her chance to do her to-morrow's stunt at
your club, she will be all right."

Margaret shivered a little. She had dared say nothing to Martha about
that "stunt." Was it possible that she was making a horrible
mistake?

The next day, Martha was still sulky but she did not, as Margaret
feared, announce her intention of returning at once to New York.
Margaret said quite casually that she had invited a few of the
brightest and most interesting people in Fairbridge to meet her that
afternoon and Martha became curious, although still resentful, and
made no motion to leave. She, however, resolved to make no further
mistakes as to costume, and just as the first tide of the Zenith Club
broke over Margaret's threshold, she appeared clad in one of her
South Mordan, Illinois, gowns