Flora, who pretended jealousy of the Angel to veil her instinctive dislike of one who read her through and through, frankly turned her back on him, and tried all her wiles on Artie, which would not have disconcerted him, had not the Also Ran commenced to smile and attract Mrs. Jimmie's attention to it. This brought Artie from his trance sufficiently to cause him to turn his attention to Cary, but it was so palpably forced that Cary devoted herself with ardour to Jimmie, and left Artie speechless. Then something spurred Flora to do a foolish thing. She deliberately began to bait Cary--to say things to annoy her--to try to mortify her. At first Cary refused to see what was evident to the rest of us. (Oh, my dinner-party was proving such a success!) At this critical juncture, Mary appeared bearing the chafing-dish full of blazing, flaming peaches, and in watching me ladle the fiery liquid, hostilities were for the moment discontinued. Involuntarily, as Mary's satisfied countenance betokened her complete happiness at the successful culmination of the dinner, my eyes wandered to the dining-room windows. I had drawn the shades with my own hand, but some mysterious agent had been at work, for they were let fly to the very window-tops. I glanced at Mary. She pressed her lips together with a whimsical twist, and surreptitiously raised a finger in sly warning. "Them rubbers are having a fit!" she murmured in my ear, as she deferentially took a blazing peach from me, and placed it before Flora with a look so black it seemed to say: "If you get your deserts, you little blister, it would set fire to you!" They were talking about love when I began listening again,--and Cary made some remark inaudible to me, which gave Flora the opportunity to say: "Is it true, then, what I have heard? Were you ever disappointed in love?" "Always!" said Cary, evenly. Jimmie grinned and jogged my elbow. "Isn't she a dandy?" he whispered. "Never turned a hair." Flora flushed angrily because Artie laughed and looked appreciatively at Cary, as if really seeing her for the first time. Every woman knows when that supreme moment comes--at least, every woman has who has liked a man before he has liked her. She feels it without looking at him. She knows it from the innermost consciousness of her being. "He is looking at me," says her heart, "for the first time, with the eyes which a man has for a woman." Many a man has been selected first, as Cary selected Artie, and been wooed by her as modestly and legitimately as she did, without suspecting that he did not take the initiative every time. So a little modest courage and restrained self-reliance crept into Cary's manner, which had never been there before, and I, believing implicitly in the Angel's _ipse dixit_ that Flora and the best man were not engaged, had visions of the first bridesmaid's winning her lost place with him, and, oh, making him pay for his neglect.