DEAR GRACE: I suppose I’ve got to keep my solemn promise to write to you all about the blow-out, though it’s an awful effort for me to write letters, and I’m so razzle-dazzled too! You simply weren’t in it! She’s stunning! The fellows all call her “La Belle Hélène.” Claghart started the name and it took like wildfire. The fair Eleanor is furious. She looked perfectly insignificant by the side of that magnificent creature. What the dickens did Margaret mean by her letter? Why, Helen Hammersley is a perfect beauty. It isn’t good to spring a surprise like that on a fellow. Bad for one’s nerves. Claghart is terribly shaken. Found out she had met ever so many celebrated artists, English and French, and they jawed for hours. Fact is Claghart’s got the cinch on the rest of us because she’s so awfully interested in art--I heard her tell him so. Oh! I almost forgot to tell you the joke! You see, Mrs. Morrison had put her up at her end of the table, with the rector of All Souls on one side of her--the old duffer!--and that fossil, Professor Radnor, on the other, and of all people in the world that ante-bellum specimen, Colonel Ralph Gray, opposite! Think of that, with Montrose and Claghart and myself at the other end, cut off from her by half a dozen married people! Think of the injustice, the tactlessness of such a proceeding! Well, I simply determined to shake things up a bit, so after the bird I said, as sweetly as only yours truly can say, “Mrs. Morrison, I was at the Dwights’ the other evening to a progressive dinner-party. Charming idea, don’t you think?” I knew all the men would back me up, and sure enough Reggie Montrose sang out, “Yes, indeed, Mrs. Morrison! Why not try it to-night?” and before the words were fairly out of his mouth, Claghart had jumped up with his wine-glass and his napkin in his hand, and was moving up one seat nearer “La Belle Hélène.” Of course there was an awful muss and Eleanor was furious, I could see, but she pulled herself together and smiled awfully sweetly at Claghart. Marie de Rochemont turned perfectly green--give you my word of honor. Margaret was the only one who seemed really not to mind. She’s a nice little thing, but she won’t have much show in society if Helen Hammersley is around.