average man.

CHAPTER X

DUSK

The Masked Dance was to begin at ten that evening; for that reason
dinner had been served early at scores of small tables on the terrace, a
hilarious and topsy-turvy, but somewhat rapid affair, because everybody
required time for dressing, and already throughout the house maids and
valets were scurrying around, unpacking masks and wigs and dainty
costumes for the adorning of the guests at Roya-Neh.

Toward nine o'clock the bustle and confusion became distracting;
corridors were haunted by graceful flitting figures in various stages of
deshabille, in quest of paraphernalia feminine and maids to adjust the
same. A continual chatter filled the halls, punctuated by smothered
laughter and subdued but insistent appeals for aid in the devious
complications of intimate attire.

On the men's side of the house there was less hubbub and some quiet
swearing; much splashing in tubs, much cigarette smoke. Men entered each
other's rooms, half-clad in satin breeches, silk stockings, and ruffled
shirts, asking a helping hand in tying queue ribbons or adjusting
stocks, and lingered to smoke and jest and gossip, and jeer at one
another's finery, or to listen to the town news from those week-enders
recently arrived from the city.

The talk was money, summer shows, and club gossip, but financial rumours
ruled.

Young Ellis, in pale blue silk and wig, perched airily, on a table,
became gloomily prophetic concerning the steady retirement of capital
from philanthropic enterprises hatched in Wall Street; Peter Tappan saw
in the endlessly sagging market dire disaster for the future digestions
of wealthy owners of undistributed securities.

"Marble columns and gold ceilings don't make a trust company," he
sneered. "There are a few billionaire gamblers from the West who seem to
think Wall Street is Coney Island. There'll be a shindy, don't make any
mistake; we're going to have one hell of a time; but when it's over the
corpses will all be shipped--ahem!--west."

Several men laughed uneasily; one or two old line trust companies were
mentioned; then somebody spoke of the Minnisink, lately taken over by
the Algonquin.

Duane lighted a cigarette and, watching the match still burning, said:

"Dysart is a director. You can't ask for any more conservative citizen
than Dysart, can you?"

Several men looked around for Dysart, but he had stepped out of the
room.

Ellis said, after a silence:

"That