There was a party like any other,--bright lights, gay dresses, a little music and a Distinguished Person,--only a little more movement, groups of girls drifting about together and watching rather than making a part of it; a party taken, perhaps, not very seriously; one, also, which broke itself up into many little ones, these, in some cases, subdued groups of victims gathered in for the amusement of another person's unfortunate importation,--in other cases, guests discreetly chosen from those not utter strangers to each other; and one heard, here the accents of a southern town, there the soft "thee" of those who, small in number, have yet made their own a city's nickname; a party on the whole not homogeneous, restless and shifting, with a disproportion even greater than usual between the lightness of pale fabrics and the sombreness of men's dress, a disproportion tending, even, it might seem, to social joy--to judge by the greater gayety in purely feminine groups. On a stiff settee under the broad stairway Anita was established in the midst of a group of Isabel's friends. It was one of the wisely chosen little parties. All included in it belonged, in effect, to one set in the city that counts numberless sets courting recognition and as many more courting the opposite. There was among those around Anita a lady with presence, also a man who had, curiously, refused to be a slave to his bank account and, at forty-five, was causing many misgivings to his friends--and much solid content to himself--through this emancipation. The lady with presence was not his wife, else the emancipation would still have been unaccomplished. There were several strong clear-eyed young men who were still revelling in the untroubled joy of the first years of an independent income; and they took life too seriously to enter quickly into the serfdom which follows after. Now they were preoccupied with buying much pleasant experience in this country and others. A few of them might, in addition to pleasant living, do something worth while, one had already done it, all were rather worth knowing.