ming French
windows on the ground floor, its heavy bands of stone flowers and
deep-sunk florated door, was soon crowded with a moving, colorful flow
of people.

Many whom Aileen and Cowperwood did not know at all had been invited by
McKibben and Lord; they came, and were now introduced. The adjacent
side streets and the open space in front of the house were crowded with
champing horses and smartly veneered carriages. All with whom the
Cowperwoods had been the least intimate came early, and, finding the
scene colorful and interesting, they remained for some time. The
caterer, Kinsley, had supplied a small army of trained servants who
were posted like soldiers, and carefully supervised by the Cowperwood
butler. The new dining-room, rich with a Pompeian scheme of color, was
aglow with a wealth of glass and an artistic arrangement of delicacies.
The afternoon costumes of the women, ranging through autumnal grays,
purples, browns, and greens, blended effectively with the brown-tinted
walls of the entry-hall, the deep gray and gold of the general
living-room, the old-Roman red of the dining-room, the white-and-gold
of the music-room, and the neutral sepia of the art-gallery.

Aileen, backed by the courageous presence of Cowperwood, who, in the
dining-room, the library, and the art-gallery, was holding a private
levee of men, stood up in her vain beauty, a thing to see--almost to
weep over, embodying the vanity of all seeming things, the mockery of
having and yet not having. This parading throng that was more curious
than interested, more jealous than sympathetic, more critical than
kind, was coming almost solely to observe.

"Do you know, Mrs. Cowperwood," Mrs. Simms remarked, lightly, "your
house reminds me of an art exhibit to-day. I hardly know why."

Aileen, who caught the implied slur, had no clever words wherewith to
reply. She was not gifted in that way, but she flared with resentment.

"Do you think so?" she replied, caustically.

Mrs. Simms, not all dissatisfied with the effect she had produced,
passed on with a gay air, attended by a young artist who followed
amorously in her train.

Aileen saw from this and other things like it how little she was really
"in." The exclusive set did not take either her or Cowperwood seriously
as yet. She almost hated the comparatively dull Mrs. Israels, who had
been standing beside her at the time, and who had heard the remark; and
yet Mrs. Israels was much better than