Perdita's isolation as the girl walked up the aisle on the grudging arm of Willoughby Hewston; and had pressed her handkerchief lightly to her eyes, a moment of emotion viewed with callous interest by a misinterpreting world which regarded it as a last tear shed for a lost opportunity, a shattered hope.

"Well," said Hewston, finishing his sweetbreads and preparing to begin on the next course, "it went off very well. I was all right, wasn't I?"

"You were perfect, dear," his wife hastened to assure him, "and it was a beautiful wedding."

Mrs. Hewston was gray and pink and plump like her husband; and this morning her grayness and pinkness and plumpness were underlined, thrown into high relief by a violet gauze gown, heavily spangled in silver. Isabel Hewston resembled nothing so much as a comfortable, placid, fireside cat, purry and complacent. If she possessed claws, which is doubtful, they were always well concealed.

"Yes, a beautiful wedding and a beautiful bride," she murmured, with a little sighing inflection habitual to her, "so young, so—"

"Humph!" interrupted her husband, with as much of a snort as a mouthful of game would permit, "I tell you it's a pretty tough thing for all of us to see old Hepworth looking so happy." He thrust out his lower lip and wrinkled up his eyes until he bore a grotesque likeness to a baby about to cry. "Hepworth's my best friend, and to see that look of almost boyish joy on his face was pretty hard. There are some things you can do and some you can't; now one of these things that no man can afford to do is to marry outside his own class. I could have told Cress so."

The other members of this intimate little coterie of friends, five in all, looked at one another and burst into involuntary laughter.

Wallace Martin, an old young man, a magazine writer, who would fain be a playwright, gave the single bark of mirth which served him for an explosion of laughter. It sounded particularly derisive now.

"I would give my little all to have the new Mrs. Hepworth hear you say that," he chuckled. "Dear old Hewston, she would not in a thousand years consider any of us in her class. She belonged, let me inform you, to one of the oldest of southern families. Her mother was a cotton princess of the loveliest and haughtiest variety. One of the famous belles of her day. Her father, too, was of the old South."

"Why, what are you talking about?" growled Hewston irascibly. "She hadn't a dime—was a beautiful cloak model or something of that kind."

"She painted dinky things for a living, if you mean that," said Martin carelessly, "lamp-shades and menu cards and such."

"If she only had some friends, even one relative," deplored Mrs. Hewston, "it would look so much—er—nicer, you know. Relatives do add a background." She shook her head regretfully.

"We'll have to be her relatives," said Maud Carmine, a niece of Mrs. Hewston and a plain rather faded young woman of pale and indefinite tints and many angles. Her claim to distinction rested on the fact that she was a drawing-room musician of—strange anomaly—real musical feeling. It was her misfortune always to be explained by those who found her tact, good nature and practical common sense useful, and who drew heavily on them, as, "not attractive looking, you know; but pure gold, and one of the most dependable persons," and this damning tribute of friendship served as an admirable check to further curiosity concerning her. "Yes, we must be her background." Her glance lingered for a moment on Wallace Martin, but he returned it briefly and indifferently.

"A young woman who has just married millions needs no family group," remarked Alice Wilstead lightly. "The most effective background is her husband."

"Gad!" Mr. Hewston put down his knife and fork to glare at her. "The idea of looking at Hepworth as a background. He who has always been in the front of everything. A background! And for a snub-nosed chit of a girl!"

"Oh, Willoughby, dear, not snub-nosed," expostulated his wife mildly.

"Snub-nosed, I said," insisted Willoughby. "Didn't I walk up the aisle with her?"

"Hush, dear, hush," murmured his wife. "Here she comes now."

The bride was leaving. Passing through the handsome, stiff apartments like a white cloud, to make ready for the journey before her, she stopped a moment for a word or two with Maud Carmine as she paused at that table.

Hewston rose reluctantly to his feet. "I once heard of a wedding," he said confidentially and hopefully to Wallace Martin, "where the bride went up to change her gown, and never showed up again."

"Where did she go?" asked Wallace with interest.

"Dunno," returned Willoughby. "Old lover. Fourth dimension. Unexplainable, but fact, I assure you."

CHAPTER II

A FAR WORLD OF DREAMING

The bride had passed through the admiring groups with a smile here, a word there and was already half up the stairway, above the voices, the heavy flower scents, the sentimental melodies which stole from the musicians' bower. On, a white, mystic figure, her veil floating behind her; on, without undue haste, but most eagerly, as if she climbed some mount which led from the world to a desired solitude.

On the first landing she paused, leaning for a moment, Juliet-like as from a balcony, and looked down on the moving mosaic of color beneath, the gay, light tones of the women's gowns thrown into relief by the dark coats of the men. The gazers paid her the tribute of involuntary "Ohs," and barely restrained themselves from applause as if at the appearance of their favorite actress. As usual Perdita had made a picture of herself, an involuntary and unpremeditated picture; but in effect beyond the calculations of the most vigilant stage manager.

She stood with one arm lightly upraised holding her bouquet of white jasmine above her laughing face. Behind her, a stained glass window, before her the marble balustrade. Then the bouquet, its white ribbons waving and circling, whirled through the air, over the sea of upturned faces and white clutching hands and straight into Alice Wilstead's arms.

With the laughter and clamor of voices ringing in her ears, Perdita, hidden from sight now by a turn of the staircase, followed, with unconcealed haste, the crimson velvet pathway which led to solitude.

At the top of the stairs she hesitated briefly, glancing right and left. She had been in the house but twice before, both times under the chaperonage of Mrs. Hewston, and she was not sure of the exact geographical position of her own suite of apartments.

At this moment her maid, engaged from that morning, stepped forward and threw open a door. Perdita smiled approval. It would have been difficult to withhold it. Olga, a paragon of maids, if references and experience count, showed no signs of the wear and tear of previous mistresses. She was delightful in appearance, rosy-cheeked, amiable, immaculate, with that air of trained capability which invites confidence.

Perdita paused before entering. "Are all my traveling things out?" she asked.

"Yes, madame."

"Very well, I shall not need you for a few moments. Remain here and when I want you I will ring."

"Yes, madame."

Perdita drew a breath of relief as the door was closed gently behind her. At last she was alone, away from eyes, eyes that were everywhere. She had felt all morning as if she were encompassed by them, appraising eyes, envious eyes, unfamiliar, inquisitive eyes.

She looked slowly about her. And these were her own apartments, these beautiful, cold, unlived-in rooms, as empty of life or individuality as a shell.

Yesterday she had walked through them with Isabel Hewston, pleased, admiring, but a little overawed. She had not realized before what a wizard's wand Cresswell wielded. He had but waved it and great architects and decorators, their disciplined and cultivated imaginations stimulated by the prospect of