"Very well, then. Be sure to pay attention to Madame Fontaine too; she likes you. We are the two women most distinguished here tonight—both high, high above your little Charters. It will double the effect. Do as I say; it’ll be amusing." Gunther joined them, protesting. "I say, Madame Fornez, it’s not fair. We’ll have to get up a Whitecaps party and kidnap Ted, if you don’t stop." "Oh, we understand each other perfectly," said Beecher, delighted to perceive that Nan Charters was still following his progress. "Whenever Emma wants to escape from some one, she remembers that she’s crazy about me. It is all arranged." Emma Fornez burst out laughing and gave him a little pat on his shoulder with the lorgnon. "We are—chums, you say—_hein_, Teddy? Monsieur Gunthère is different. I like to talk with him—seriously." But at this moment, in response to a clamor, one of the negroes began dancing a shuffle in a quickly formed circle. Emma Fornez rushed off, with a cry of delight, deserting both young men. "You’ve made a killing, Ted," said Gunther, laughing. "Pooh! she’ll forget my name tomorrow," said Beecher, who, however, believed nothing of the sort. "Come on." Mrs. Kildair was standing by the great Italian fireplace, her glance playing incessantly through the crowd, nodding from time to time, but without hearing the remarks of two or three older men who surrounded her. So different was the magnetic animation of her whole attitude from the ordinary feline languor of her pose, that Beecher noticed it at once, an impression heightened by the flash of the eyes and the almost electric warmth of her hand as she greeted him. Mrs. Kildair, who had followed his entrance with Mrs. Craig Fontaine and Emma Fornez and moreover was particularly pleased at his presenting young Gunther, was unusually gracious. Gunther, with his direct, almost obtrusive stare, studied her with unusual curiosity, conversed a little, and departed, after receiving a cordial invitation from her to call. "What is the matter with you, Rita?" said Beecher immediately. "Matter—how do you mean?" "I have never seen you so excited." "Really, do I seem so?" she said, waving to some one on the floor. "Extraordinarily so." "I am generally—dormant," she said, laughing. "Yes, I am excited tonight." "You are on the track of the ring—you have found it," he said instantly, with a pang of disappointment. "No, not that," she said, with a frown. An idea came to him. He imagined that she too, like the good gambler he felt her to be, was laughing before the irretrievable disaster of the morrow. "Look here, Rita," he said sympathetically, "you’re not caught in the stock market, are you? "No, no, of course not." She saw the look on his face, and was touched by it. "Ruined and dying game? No, no; I am excited, very much excited, that’s all. Will you ask me to dance, sir?" "Are they dancing?" "Of course. Hurry up!"