After helping Fanny in her seat, West took his place beside her. He had been bored on learning that this child was to be his table companion; now he felt somewhat amused. “I can’t say that any of my dreams have been realized,” he remarked, unfolding his napkin. “You poor thing!” Fanny cried. Then she looked searchingly at his face. “You don’t show any very great disappointment.” Fanny glanced quickly around the table: many of the faces were partly concealed from her by the masses of roses and ferns in the centre. There was Guy, talking with that queer little woman from the Argentine Republic, the wife of an under-secretary or something. Fanny wondered vaguely how she had happened to be invited. Oh, she was supposed to be intellectual or literary or something like that. Then Fanny smiled at the thought of the way poor Guy would be bored. Suddenly she turned to Franklin West. “Who do you think is the prettiest woman here?” “The prettiest woman?” West repeated, gallantly, emphasizing the noun. “Well, I don’t think I should have to hesitate long about that.” “Well, who?” “Mrs. Douglas Briggs, of course.” Fanny’s eyes rested affectionately on her aunt. “Of course,” she agreed. “But somehow,” she went on, “I never think about Auntie as pretty. I just think of her as good. I don’t believe she ever had a mean thought or did a mean thing in her life. Don’t you think she’s perfectly lovely?” she asked, inconsistently. Fanny looked up into West’s face and noticed that it had flushed deeply. “Yes, she is perfectly lovely,” he repeated in a low voice. “Now, if I were a man I’d fall head over heels in love with her.” “And then what would happen?” West asked, without taking his eyes off Mrs. Briggs’s face. “Why, I’d marry her, of course.” “And what would become of Mr. Briggs?” “Uncle Doug?” Fanny asked in surprise. “Oh, I’d have fallen in love long before he came along.” “But suppose you’d fallen in love after he came along?” Fanny wrinkled her nose. “I don’t like to suppose unpleasant things,” she replied. “Anyway, there’s only one man in the world good enough for her.” “Who’s that?” “The man that she married, of course,” Fanny exclaimed. The dinner proved to be a perfect success. When the great men at the table learned that it was Fanny Wallace’s first dinner-party they paid her such attention that she let herself go completely and kept them laughing by her naïve impertinences. The sight of young Clinton gave Guy Fullerton deep relief; he knew that the blotched-faced, thin and anæmic Englishman, with the ponderous manner of the embryonic statesman, would appeal only to Fanny’s sense of humor. Fanny, indeed, was the centre of interest throughout the dinner; even the great men’s wives petted her. When the ladies left the table to go into the drawing-room Helen had a chance to whisper to her: “My dear, you’ve been splendid. I sha’n’t dare give any more dinner-parties without you.”