The repast was magnificent. There were more than thirty ladies present, and these, all brilliantly attired and some of striking personal beauty, made the prodigal array of flowers, the admirable service of many delicious viands, and the soft music pealing from the near hall just loudly enough not to drown conversation while it filled pauses, produce an effect where the most unrestrained hospitality was mingled with a faultless refinement. Claire's spirits seemed to rise as the decorous yet lavish banquet proceeded. Her laugh now and then rang out clear and sweet, while she addressed this or that lady, at various distances from where she herself sat. Mrs. Diggs, whose place was next her own, observed it all with secret wonder. She alone knew the bleeding pride, the balked aspiration, the thwarted yearning, which this pathetic and fictitious buoyancy hid. It was a defiance, and yet how skilled and radiant a one! Could you blame the woman who knew how to bloom and sparkle like this, for loving the world where such dainty eminence was envied and prized? Was there not a touch of genius in her pitiable yet dauntless masquerade? Who else could have played the same part with the same deft security, and in the very teeth of failure and dethronement? Claire's gayety and self-possession made more than one of her guests lose faith in the tale of her husband's ruin. They were all women of the world, and they all had the tact and breeding to perceive that their hostess, now if ever, merited their best courtesy. They could all have staid away at the last moment; Mrs. Van Horn held no exclusive claim to the possession of her headache; its right of appropriation belonged elsewhere. But they had not availed themselves of it; they had chosen to sit at Claire's board, to break her delicate bread. Hence they owed her their allegiance to-day, even if to-morrow they should find expediency in its harshest opposite. But it now appeared to them as if she were refuting the widespread rumor of her husband's misfortunes; her own equipoise and scintillance bespoke this no less than the irreproachable _chic_ of the entertainment to which she had bidden them. Mrs. Lee was not very far away from Claire, and yet the latter never addressed or seemed to notice her. But Mrs. Diggs noticed her; she indeed maintained a vigilant, though repressed, watchfulness.