Elise came in to see her. Helen gave the first explanation of her indisposition that came to mind, and declined all ministrations. Her mother came, and she would have dismissed her as briefly had not Mrs. Phillips asserted authority and ordered her into bed and suggested calling the family physician. At this intimation Helen demurred. She felt that she would suffocate if she were to be tucked up and made to lie quiet, with the doctor fingering her pulse and talking of sleeping potions while her soul was throbbing in such a frenzy of horror. To escape from them and from herself, she suddenly sat up and announced her intention of attending the dancing party which Elise was giving for the evening. There was a vigorous opposition to this procedure by both her mother and Elise, and by her father also, who had come in to have a look at her: but she outwilled them all. * * * * * Elise’s dancing party was an affair to be remembered—an affair that is remembered. It deserved to be an unusual occasion, for in arranging it Elise was conscious of being in an unusual frame of mind. She was in some way disposed to be so perfectly even-handed in her dispensations. She directed the three invitations to Mr. Evans Rutledge, Captain George St. Lawrence Howard and Senator Joseph Richland with her own hand and with almost one continuous stroke of the pen. She took this batch of three invitations as a separate handful and placed them together in the basket for the mail. She assigned to each of these gentlemen one dance with herself, and one only, in the programme of the formal first half of the evening. She appointed as attendants for the eleven o’clock collation Mr. Rutledge to Mrs. Hazard, Captain Howard to Helen, and Senator Richland to Alice Mackenzie—the fiancée of Donald MacLane. In everything she was judicially impartial. She played no favourites. Her plans carried through charmingly, and after dancing through the card a delighted lot of guests sat down to the light luncheon, though three men in the party, despite all their gallant attentions to the women beside them, were using half of their brains at least in planning for the catch-as-catch-can hour and a half that was to follow. Elise had smiled upon them equally and tormentingly, and not a man of them but felt that the briefest little five minutes _tête-à-tête_ might do magical things. "Well," said Lola, after she and Rutledge had effervesced in a few minutes of commonplaces and conventionalities, "is your money still on the Englishman?" "No," said Rutledge, "I’ve quit gambling." "Lost your sporting nerve?" "No, not that; but a man who bets against himself deserves to lose, and I can’t afford to lose." "But your self-respect?" laughed Lola. "Now Miss—ah—Mrs. Hazard, don’t jump on a fellow when he’s down. Self-respect is nothing less than an abomination when it comes between a man and a girl like—that,—and besides, she didn’t mean it that way."