"Might one ask why they objected to her? Certainly, her nationality wasn't a ground for such a demand, for half your servants are French, aren't they?" questioned Mrs. Danielson with much interest. "Oh, it wasn't that. She didn't play bridge! She just made the twelfth one, and her not playing spoiled the third table--they would not have her," explained Mrs. Norman dubiously. "What are we coming to!" Mrs. Danielson exclaimed in despair; "I don't wonder you're discouraged--you have to be so careful how you are gotten up. You look so stunning in some things and so--well, you understand--one must study one's style! Now tell me, what are you going to do about the Christy's bridge? Everyone is wild over it! I've heard nothing else for days--it's to be quite the event of the season. Shall you go?" "No. I have thought it all out. It seems to me some of us must take a stand. If we accept invitations from the Christys' why the harm is done--they will be in society before we know it! There are enough queer people in our set already without adding them. I shall not go!" Mrs. Norman drew herself up haughtily. "That's just what I think," echoed Ethel Danielson; "we must, as you say, take some definite position in the matter. If we stand out I am sure others will. The Christys are simply dying to get in, and they have loads of money to back them. What was it--blacking? Something disagreeable, I remember." "No, ink! Just as black and disgusting. They've squandered hundreds on this bridge party; all the prizes were bought abroad, I hear, and Kathryn Van Rensselaer told me there were to be fifty tables," continued Mrs. Norman. "It will be one of those horribly vulgar affairs with five times as much of everything as there is any need of, I suppose," rejoined Ethel scornfully. "Do you know, I hear that ballroom is the most magnificent in New York--done entirely by Garten-Veen." "Well, we shall at least hear about it," sighed Mrs. Norman, with a slight tinge of regret in her tone, "we'll telephone--you have one of course!" "Have a telephone? Well, I should say! One might as well be out of the world as try to live without one. Everyone has one now," answered Mrs. Danielson with a shrug. "Then do call me up and tell me everything you hear," said Mrs. Norman eagerly, "and I will call you. Thank Heaven, there are two of us with conscience enough to block the Christys' social pathway!" During the week preceding the much talked of function, one heard it on every hand. Some said the prizes alone mounted up into the hundreds; others announced that the decorations were to be the floral marvel of the season; two reporters had been permitted to view Mrs. Christy's gown and wrote exhaustive descriptions on this monument to the Parisian art. Mrs. Norman and Ethel Danielson had frequent long gossips over the telephone, relating each fresh item and exulting that they, at least, had not lost their heads.