As Patty had promised, she gave the first dance to Philip Van Reypen; and after that she was fairly besieged by would-be partners. The fact that she was hostess at her own coming-out ball, the fact that she danced beautifully, and the fact that she was so pretty and charming, all combined to make her, as was not unusual, the most popular girl present. "Anything left for me?" asked Roger, gaily, as he threaded the crowds at Patty's side. "I saved one for you," said Patty, smiling at him; "for I hoped you'd ask me, sooner or later." Roger gratefully accepted the dance Patty had saved for him, and soon after he came to claim her for it. "I say, Patty," he began when they were whirling about the floor, "who is that stuff Mona has trailing after her?" "Moderate your language, Roger," said Patty, smiling up at him, and noticing that his expression was very wrathy indeed. "He doesn't deserve moderate language! He's a bounder, if I ever saw one! What's he doing here?" "He seems to be dancing," said Patty, demurely, "and he doesn't dance half badly, either." "Oh, stop your fooling, Patty; I'm not in the mood for it. Tell me who he is." Patty had never known Roger to be so out of temper, and she resented his tone, which was almost rude. Now, for all her sweetness, Patty had a touch of perversity in her nature, and Roger had roused it. So she said: "I don't know why you speak like that, Roger. He's a friend of Mona's, and lives at the Hotel Plaza, where she lives." "The fact that two people live in the same big hotel doesn't give them the right to be friends," growled Roger. "Who introduced them, anyhow?" "I don't know, I'm sure," said Patty, her patience exhausted; "but Mr. Galbraith knows him, so it must be all right." Patty was not quite ingenuous in this speech, for she knew perfectly well, from what Mr. Galbraith had said to her, that it was not all right. But she was irritated by Roger's demeanour, and perversely disagreed with him. "Well, I don't believe he's all right; I don't like his looks a bit, and, Patty, you know as well as I do, that the Galbraiths are not quite competent always to select the people best worth knowing." "Oh, what a fuss you are, Roger; and it's hardly fair when you don't know anything at all about Mr. Lansing." "Do you?" "No," and then Patty hesitated. She did know something,--she knew what Mr. Galbraith had told her. But she was not of a mind to tell this to Roger. "I only met him as I was introduced," she said, "and Mona has never so much as even mentioned him to me." "Didn't she ask you if she might bring him to-night?" "No; I suppose, as an intimate friend, she didn't think that necessary."