"Don't boast. Remember that it's the wicked who stand in slippery places," said Bea, with meaning. "But indeed, I am glad you got here.

There is some distorted, goggle-eyed Chinese monster at my elbow, and on the table before me is an ornament which chills the marrow of my bones. I dare not look up."

Hayden gazed bravely about him. "I don't think I ever saw such a hideous room in my life," he said slowly and with conviction.

"There is only one room in the world uglier," Bea a.s.sured him, "and that is the dining-room; but they do say that the wall-paper in her bed-room is of a bright scarlet, with large lozenges representing green and blue parrots swinging in gilded cages."

Hayden laughed and shivered. "It takes strong nerves," he said. "Do you suppose there are people who come often?"

"Oh, dear me, yes," returned Mrs. Habersham. "One would dine in Inferno if the food were good. Her table is as perfect as her house and gowns are dreadful, and then Edith herself is very clever and amusing. Here she comes."

"The cause of this delay," smiled Mrs. Symmes in pa.s.sing, "is Mrs. Ames.

I'll give her just one minute more."

Bea smiled perfunctorily, and then turned on Hayden 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 quant.i.ty 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 a.s.sured 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 pa.s.sionately 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 amus.e.m.e.nt to the arguments which surged and eddied about him. He looked for the most part indifferent, although, perhaps, he was only patient.

At last, in an unguarded moment Mrs. Habersham paused for breath, and in the brief ensuing silence Penfield entered the conversation like a thin sharp wedge.

"What a fad those b.u.t.terflies are among you lovely ladies," he said to Mrs. Habersham. "But yours are paler than most of them, more opaline.

Why?"

"Because I wear red so frequently," she replied indifferently. "The purple and yellow b.u.t.terflies would look horrid with my crimson frocks."

"I really think," said Penfield slowly, meeting her eyes with a cool, blank gaze, "that, saving your presence, Mrs. Habersham, Marcia Oldham has by far the handsomest set I have seen."

At this red rag, purposely fluttered as Hayden felt before the eyes of Mrs. Ames, that lady sniffed audibly and tossed her head, emitting at the same moment a faint, contemptuous cackle.

"Oh, no," Bea a.s.sured him with languor, although the scarlet burned in her cheek. "Marcia's are nothing to compare to Mrs. ----," mentioning the name of the London actress.

"Oh, I must differ from you." Penfield was suavely positive. "I am surprised that you should say that, for Miss Oldham's are quite the most artistic I have seen."

"Naturally Miss Oldham would have the handsomest set in the market, wouldn't she?" queried Mrs. Ames in what no doubt was intended to be a tone of innocent inquiry.

"Marcia's taste is very beautiful," said Mrs. Habersham coldly.

"And very extravagant, I understand." Mrs. Ames was started now; there was no stopping her. "If one wears beautiful things in these days one must expect to pay for them."

Mrs. Habersham shrugged her shoulders and turning to Hayden asked him when he had last seen his cousin Kitty Hampton; but Mrs. Ames' cracked voice rose above their low tones.

"I wish some one would explain to me--perhaps you can, Mr. Penfield--just how a young woman who hasn't a penny to her name can afford a superb necklace. Such things could not have occurred in my young days; but different times, different manners. Humph!"

Before Penfield could reply, Bea Habersham leaned across the table and addressed her clearly: "It seems to me that such imaginary and absurd behavior would be considered as reprehensible to-day as in the remote era you mention."

Mrs. Ames held her lorgnon to her eyes with one withered, yellow hand, each finger covered to the swollen knuckles with diamonds dim with dust, then she dropped it in her lap with another dry cackle and said with a complete change of tone, as if reverting to some new topic of conversation:

"Mr. Penfield was speaking of your friend, Miss Oldham, a moment or two ago, Mrs. Habersham. Perhaps you will be able to tell me the ident.i.ty of the rather elderly, ordinary-looking man with whom I have seen her several times lately?"

It seemed to Hayden that Bea's face grew a shade paler, but his momentary apprehension gave way to a swift admiration for her poise, the casual and careless indifference with which she answered:

"I am sure I can't imagine, Mrs. Ames. Marcia has many friends, more I fancy than you dream of." He also felt a swift longing to take Horace Penfield by the scruff of his thin, craning neck and drop him from the window instead of permitting him to sit there calmly sipping his liqueur with that faint, amused smile as of gratified malice about his lips.

Then he drew a breath of relief. Every one was rising.

"You were magnificent," he whispered as he drew aside for Bea to pa.s.s.

She smiled gratefully at him. "Thank goodness, it's to be bridge now and not conversation."

A few minutes later they were all seated at the card-tables and except for the occasional low-toned voicing of the conventions of the game, a grateful silence reigned.

But at the close of the afternoon, just as they were leaving, Bea asked Hayden if he would not drive down-town with her and let her drop him at his apartment. He accepted gladly, hoping in the brief intimacy of the drive homeward together that she would speak of Marcia.

But for a season, Mrs. Habersham cared only to discuss the scene they had just left; the fortunes of the game; the excellencies of this player, the atrocities of that; the eccentricities of their hostess and her apparently ineradicable pa.s.sion for ugliness.

"It is true," she a.s.sured him, "about the red paper and the green and blue parrots in gilt cages; a woman who has seen it swore upon her honor."

They had by this time turned into the Park, and Bea leaned forward to inhale the fresher air. Night was falling fast; the spreading lawn-s.p.a.ces, the dense shrubbery, the irregularly disposed trees were no longer distinct, but melted together, indistinguishable and unfeatured blurs in the deepening twilight.

Bea drooped her brow on her hand and sat in silence for a few moments.

Then she turned to Hayden, her lips compressed, her hands clasped tightly together.

"Isn't it awful! Isn't it dreadful!" she cried. "To think of that old witch of Endor saying all those horrible untrue things about poor lovely Marcia, and worse, spreading them broadcast?"

Hayden lifted his chin in quick determination. "Mrs. Habersham, I can not be ignorant of what you refer to. I have, to my annoyance"--he hesitated and then deliberately chose another word--"to my pain, heard various hints and innuendoes before of the same kind. Now, why is this? Just malice, envy, jealousy? Why"--his indignation vibrated through his voice--"should one so lovely, so above reproach, as Miss Oldham, be the victim of that sort of thing?"

"Because," said Bea bitterly, "Marcia attends strictly to her own business and does not request any advice or permit any interference. Oh, Mr. Hayden, it is useless to tell you what a dear she is. I know from what you have just said that you do, you must admire her. No one could help it," she added, with a simple and loyal conviction. "So you may understand how difficult it is for us who love her, for the very few of us who are in some measure in her confidence, to have to accept the fact that there are certain things in her life which appear odd, which are not--" She broke off, looking at him uncertainly.

"Mrs. Habersham--" Hayden had turned about in his seat so that he could gaze more directly at her, and now, although his face had grown pale, he smiled down upon her his charming smile. "Mrs. Habersham, let me go further and tell you that I have never met a woman in my life toward whom I have felt as I do toward Miss Oldham. Why not put it frankly and tell you the exact truth? I love her."

Bea's eyes brightened delightedly and then grew a little sad. "I suspected as much," she said gently, "and yet, I hardly knew whether you had the courage or not. Now," impulsively moving nearer to him, "I will be as frank as you have been. Nothing in all the world, nothing would please me half so much as for you and Marcia to love each other. I don't know you awfully well, Mr. Hayden, and yet," she laughed, "I do in a way.

True, we have only met a few times; but for many years I have been well acquainted with Kitty's 'Bobby,' But," and her dark eyes smiled on him with a soft shining in their depths, "I think that just now when there is all this unkind whispering it is a beautiful and courageous thing for you to love Marcia, and I want to a.s.sure you that all the support I can give to your cause is yours."

Her ungloved hand lay on her knee, and Hayden lifted it and lightly kissed it. "Dear lady," he began, his voice a little broken.