Mr. Bellton was at heart the _poseur_, but he was also the fighter. Even when he carried the war of political reform into sections of the town where the lawless elements had marked him for violence, he went stubbornly in the conspicuousness of ultra-tailoring. Though he loved to address the proletariat in the name of brotherhood, he loved with a deeper passion the exclusiveness of presiding as host at a board where his guests included the "best people." Senor Ribero, who at home used the more ear-filling entitlement of Senor Don Ricardo de Ribero y Pierola, was hardly a notable, yet he was a new type, and, even before the ladies had emerged from their cloak-room and while the men were apart in the grill, the host felt that he had secured a successful ingredient for his mixture of personal elements. After the fashion of Latin-American diplomacy, educated in Paris and polished by great latitude of travel, the attache had the art of small talk and the charm of story-telling. To these recommendations, he added a slender, almost military carriage, and the distinction of Castilian features. A punctured tire had interrupted the homeward journey of Steele and Saxon, who had telephoned to beg that the dinner go on, without permitting their tardiness to delay the more punctual. The table was spread in a front room with a balcony that gave an outlook across the broad lawn and the ancient trees which bordered the sidewalk. At the open windows, the May air that stirred the curtains was warm enough to suggest summer, and new enough after the lately banished winter to seem wonderful--as though the rebirth of nature had wrought its miracle for the first time. Ribero was the only guest who needed presentation, and, as he bowed over the hand of each woman, it was with an almost ornate ceremoniousness of manner. Duska Filson, after the spontaneous system of her opinions and prejudices, disliked the South American. To her imaginative mind, there was something in his jetlike darkness and his quick, almost tigerish movements that suggested the satanic. But, if the impression she received was not flattering to the guest, the impression she made was evidently profound. Ribero glanced at her with an expression of extreme admiration, and dropped his dark lashes as though he would veil eyes from which he could not hope to banish flattery too fulsome for new acquaintanceship.