ity, and I don't suppose I
should have looked at her again if I had not noticed that my friend was
doing so.

She was a woman of about forty-seven, with fair faded hair and a young
figure. Her gray dress was handsome but ineffective, and her pale and
rather serious face wore a small unvarying smile which might have
been pinned on with her ornaments. She was one of the women in whom
increasing years show rather what they have taken than what they have
bestowed, and only on looking closely did one see that what they had
taken must have been good of its kind.

Phil Cumnor and another man were talking to her, and the very intensity
of the attention she bestowed on them betrayed the straining of
rebellious thoughts. She never let her eyes stray or her smile drop; and
at the proper moment I saw she was ready with the proper sentiment.

The party, like most of those that Mrs. Cumnor gathered about her, was
not composed of exceptional beings. The people of the old vanished
New York set were not exceptional: they were mostly cut on the same
convenient and unobtrusive pattern; but they were often exceedingly
"nice." And this obsolete quality marked every look and gesture of the
lady I was scrutinizing.

While these reflections were passing through my mind I was aware that
Merrick's eyes rested still on her. I took a cross-section of his look
and found in it neither surprise nor absorption, but only a certain
sober pleasure just about at the emotional level of the rest of the
room.

If he continued to look at her, his expression seemed to say, it was
only because, all things considered, there were fewer reasons for
looking at anybody else.

This made me wonder what were the reasons for looking at _her_; and as
a first step toward enlightenment I said:--"I'm sure I've seen the lady
over there in gray--"

Merrick detached his eyes and turned them on me with a wondering look.

"Seen her? You know her." He waited. "_Don't_ you know her? It's Mrs.
Reardon."

I wondered that he should wonder, for I could not remember, in
the Cumnor group or elsewhere, having known any one of the name he
mentioned.

"But perhaps," he continued, "you hadn't heard of her marriage? You knew
her as Mrs. Trant."

I gave him back his stare. "Not Mrs. Philip Trant?"

"Yes; Mrs. Philip Trant."

"Not Paulina?"

"Yes--Paulina," he said, with a just perceptible delay before the name.

In my surprise I continued to stare at him. He averted his e