and returning to their homes, wherever they may be, sell out their
businesses for a song and move on, to get elected if they can, which
does not necessarily follow.
Carriages, in stately procession, disembarked their precious freight;
the lift, laden with youth and beauty, shot up and down like a glorious
Jack-in-the-Box; over the corridors poured a stream of beautiful maidens
and handsome gentlemen, to separate for their several tiring-rooms, and
soon to remeet in the palm-decked vestibule. Within the great room,
couples were already dancing; Fetzy's Hungarians on a dais, concealed
behind a wild thicket of growing things, were sighing out a wonderful
waltz; rows of white-covered chairs stood expectantly on all four sides
of the room; and the chaperones, august and handsome, stood in a stately
line to receive and to welcome. And to them came in salutation Charles
Gardiner West and, beside him, the lady whom he honored with his hand
that evening, Miss Millicent Avery, late of Maunch Chunk, but now of
Ours.
They made their devoirs to the dowagers; silently they chose their
seats, which he bound together with a handkerchief in a true lovers'
knot; and, Fetzy's continuing its heavenly work, he put his arm about
her without speech, and they floated away upon the rhythmic tide.
At last her voice broke the golden silence: "I feel enormously happy
to-night. I don't know why."
The observation might seem unnoteworthy to the casual, but it carried
them all around the room again.
"Fortune is good to me," said he, as lightly as he could, "to let me be
with you when you feel like that."
He had never seen her so handsome; the nearness of her beauty
intoxicated him; her voice was indolent, provocative. She was superbly
dressed in white, and on her rounded breast nodded his favor, a splendid
corsage of orchid and lily-of-the-valley.
"Fortune?" she queried. "Don't you think that men bring these things to
pass for themselves?"
They had made the circle on that, too, before West said: "I wonder if
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