It was just at the top of the steps leading to the foyer of the ball-room that Crabb met Patricia Wharton in the crowd, face to face. The encounter was unavoidable. He saw the brief question in her glance before she placed him, the vanishing smile, the momentary pallor, and then was conscious that she had gone by, her eyes looking past him, her brows slightly raised, her lips drawn together, the very letter of indifference and contempt. It was cutting advanced to the dignity of a fine art. Crabb felt the color rise to his temples and heard the young bud at his side saying: "What is it, Mr. Crabb? You look as if you'd seen the ghost of all your past transgressions." "_All_ of them, Miss Cheston! Oh, I hope I don't look as bad as that," he laughed. "Only one--a very tiny one." "Do tell me," cried the bud. "First, let's safely run the gantlet of the lorgnons." When the party was assembled and past the grenadiers who jealously guard the sacred inner bulwarks, Crabb was glad to relinquish his companion to another, while he sought seclusion behind a bank of azaleas to watch the moving dancers. So she really _was_ somebody. He began, for a moment, to doubt the testimony of the vagrant glances and the guilty parasol. Could he have been mistaken? Had she really forgotten the parasol after all? The situation was brutal enough for her and he was quite prepared to respect her delicacy. What he did resent was the way in which she had done it. She had taken to cover angrily and stood at bay with all her woman's weapons sharpened. The curl of lip and narrowed eye bespoke a degree of disdain quite out of proportion to the offense. But he made a rapid resolution not to seek her or meet her eye. If his was the fault, it was the only reparation he could offer her. As he whirled around the room with his little bud, he caught a glimpse of her upon the opposite side and so maneuvered that he would come no nearer. When he had guided his partner to a seat, it did not take him long to gratify a very natural curiosity. "Will you tell me," he asked, "who--no, don't look now--the girl in the black spangly dress is?" "Who? Where?" asked Miss Cheston. "Patricia, you mean? Of course! Miss Wharton, my cousin. Haven't you met her?" "Er--no! She's good-looking." "Isn't she? And the dearest creature--but rather cold and the least bit prim." "Pri--Oh, really!" "Yes! We're Quakers, you know. She belongs to the older set. Perhaps that's why she seems a trifle cold and--er--conventional." "Convent--! Oh, yes, of course." "You know we're really quite a breezy lot, if you only know us. Some of this year's debs are really very dreadful." "How shocking, and Miss Wharton is not dreadful?" "Oh, dear, no. But she is awfully good fun. Come, you must meet her. Let me take you over." But good fortune in the person of Stephen Ventnor intervened.