"Yes. I--" he caught himself in time. "I'll tell you all about it, but not now. Some other day, if I may. Oh, I say, this will fetch the governor an awful cropper! Married to-night! Here? In this house? Why--why, it must have been in this very room. And those confounded dummies were--By Jove!" He stood up and surveyed the inanimate group through a seldom used monocle. An intensely thoughtful expression put many wrinkles upon his brow, but a sudden burst of understanding cleared them away in a jiffy. He beamed. "She's had real dummies at the wedding instead of the imitations that society provides. Oh, I say, that's sarcasm simplified. It's pretty rough, though, don't you think, Miss Downing?" "It doesn't seem to distress you very deeply, Mr. Van Pycke," she said. "But you are wrong in your conclusions. The figures do not represent the blockheads of New York society. They are meant to approximate the more active of the busybodies now at large. Do you see?" "I'm hanged if I do." "You are a very good friend of Mrs. Sco--Mrs. De Foe's, are you not?" she demanded. "A devoted admirer, I swear, or I wouldn't be here to-night." "Then, I think I may explain the situation to you. Those figures represent the society queens who closed their doors against Mrs. Scoville last season. The masculine examples represent the satellites of those virtuous ladies who profess never to have been found out. Mrs. Scoville made out her list of guests last week. She resolved to return good for evil. She invited the ladies and their satellites--by mental telepathy, I might say. Then she sent the butler over into Eighth Avenue with instructions to fetch them here in a moving van. They arrived last night, under cover of darkness. They spent the night in this room. Shocking, you'd say? That--" He interrupted, his eyes gleaming. "You mean to say that she rented these figures for no other purpose than to pose here as people who cut her because--er--because Mrs. Grundy gossiped too fluently? Suffering Mo--I should say, good gracious! What an idea!" "That's it precisely, Mr. Van Pycke. I fancy you know the ladies and gentlemen quite well. They treated her abominably last winter. She didn't mind it very much, as you know. She's not that sort. People _did_ talk about her, but her real friends remained true. She thought it would be splendid to have her enemies here in just this way. With the understanding, of course, that the whole story is to get into the newspapers." He stared harder than ever. "Into the newspapers? Good heavens, you don't mean to say she's going to let the papers in on this?"