d
that a triumphantly blazoned "I told you so!" or a depreciatory and
horrified: "You misunderstood me, _dear_," hung upon the pending
verdict of the powers that be.

Gregory St. Ledger, in so far as any one knew, was neither liked nor
disliked among men; being of the sort who enjoy watching games of
tennis and, during the later hours of the afternoon, drive pampered
Pekingese about the streets in silver-mounted electrics.

He enjoyed, also, a baby-blue reputation which successfully cloaked
certain spots of pale cerise in his rather negligible character.

He smoked innumerable scented cigarettes, gold as to tip and monogram,
which he selected with ostentatious unostentation from a heavy gold
case liberally bestudded with rubies and diamonds.

He viewed events calmly through a life-size monocle, was London
tailored, Paris shod, and New York manicured; and carried an embossed
leather check-book, whose detachable pink slips proved a potent safety
factor against undue increment of the St. Ledger exchequer.

Thus equipped, and for reasons of family, young St. Ledger decided to
marry Ethel Manton; and to this end he devoted himself persistently and
insidiously, but with the inborn patience and diplomacy of the South
Islander.

Bill Carmody he hated with the snakelike hate of little men, but
shrewdly perceiving that the girl held more than a friendly regard for
him, enthusiastically sang his praises in her ears; praises that,
somehow, always left her with a strange smothering sensation about the
heart and a dull resentment of the fact that she cared.

With the disappearance of young Carmody, St. Ledger redoubled his
attentions. The young man found it much easier than did his sisters to
be numbered "among those present" at the smart functions of the elite.

When New York shivered in the first throes of winter, a well-planned
cruise in mild waters under soft skies on board the lavishly appointed
and bountifully supplied St. Ledger yacht, whose sailing list included
a carefully selected and undeniably congenial party of guests, worked
wonders in the matter of St. Ledger's social aspirations.

At the clubs, substantial and easily forgotten loans to members of the
embarrassed elect, coupled with vague hints, rarely failed to pay
dividends in the form of invitations to ultra-exclusive _affaires_.

At the hostelry the St. Ledger _soirees_, if so glitteringly bizarre as
to draw high-browed frowns from the more reserved and