an alarmed face. "I
never would have come to-day--never, if I had fancied she would be
present. She will be sure to launch out on Marcia Oldham before luncheon
is over. She never misses an opportunity. She has a mania on the
subject."

Hayden glanced toward the door with curiosity. "Where is this pepper and
vitriol old dame?" he asked, with elaborate carelessness.

"She has not come yet. Did you not hear Edith say that it is she for whom
we are waiting? You will see her in a moment, though. She is always late;
but she will come, never fear."

Her words were prophetic, for at that moment Mrs. Ames hurried into the
room, a wiry, spare old woman with a small hooked nose and a jaw like a
nut-cracker. The skin of her face was yellow and deeply wrinkled, her
eyes were those of a fierce, untamed bird, and she was gowned--swathed is
the more suitable word--in rusty black with a quantity of dangling
fringes and many jingling chains.

Luncheon was announced immediately after her arrival, and to Hayden's
dismay he found that it was served at small tables and that he was placed
between Mrs. Ames and Mrs. Habersham, with Horace Penfield opposite
smiling in faint satirical glee at the situation.

"I shall never forgive Edith Symmes for this, never," was Bea's indignant
whisper in Hayden's ear. "But just the same, I shall not give that old
witch a chance to air any of her grievances. You'll see. With your help
and cooperation I intend to monopolize the conversation."

Robert hastily assured her that she could depend on him to the limit of
his capacities, and together they seized and held the ball of
conversation, occasionally tossing it from one to the other; but never
permitting it for a moment to fall into either Penfield's or Mrs. Ames'
hands.

Hayden pottered over this incident or that, dawdling through long-winded
tales of travel, and when his recollection or invention flagged Mrs.
Habersham introduced topics so inimical to Mrs. Ames' frequently aired
views that this lady rose passionately to the fray. Woman's Suffrage,
Socialism, the Decline of the Church, Bea, a conservative, flung upon the
table and Mrs. Ames pounced upon them as a dog upon a bone, a radical of
radicals.

Meantime, Horace Penfield had sat enjoying his luncheon with a cool
placidity, and listening with a smile of faint amusement to the arguments
which surged and eddied about him. He looked for the most part
indifferent, although, perhaps, he was only