Surely Archibald Wickersham was the other guest whom they were expecting. Allison's very presence argued that. Yet Steve's nose played him a startling trick as he mounted upward. He could have sworn that he smelled that faint perfume which always made him remember, now, his first letter from her; had he not been afraid to hope he would have been positive that there was a flurry of skirts retreating above him. But he knew that she could not have come. He knew it! And then, three-quarters of an hour later, when he had dressed and turned again to the stairway, she was there at the foot of the flight, waiting for him to appear. In a little low pink satin gown that made rounded her slenderness--made her appear even smaller than she was--she gave him an elaborate courtesy from the main floor, and flung up at him her laughter. "Merry Christmas, Sir Galahad," she called. Just as he had paused there a half-score of years before, Stephen O'Mara paused now, with Caleb and Miss Sarah again gazing up at him. It was the first time Sarah Hunter had seen the grown-up Steve in conventional black and white; her emotions were much the same as they had been on that remoter day. But Steve did not even see her glowing face below him in that instant, nor Caleb's, nor that of Allison either, who watching Steve's eyes, had suddenly ceased to smile. Caleb knew what his sister's thoughts were, however, for he was recalling that black velvet suit with silver buttons himself. While Steve and Barbara were shaking hands he gained her ear in whispered admiration. "Sarah," he commented, "Sarah, you are clever!" Miss Sarah was on the point of taking Dexter Allison's arm to lead the way to table. Her reply was tuned to Caleb's ear alone. "She had thought of him in terms of blue flannel and corduroy long enough," she said. "If you please, Dexter--Stephen, do you and Barbara want any dinner?" Those two were still shaking hands. Steve, who was only dimly aware of the fact that Garry and Fat Joe had arrived, the latter guilty of his first dinner jacket and enormously proud of his guilt, stood looking at Barbara while she was chattering at him, without hearing distinctly a word she spoke. Miss Sarah's question helped to bring him back. "You look as though I were a wraith," the girl accused him. "Am I so pale after a few weeks of sophisticated city air?" But her man had taken command of himself again, by then. "I thought you looked like--shall I tell you what I thought?" "Most certainly," she was forced to insist. "Wasn't it a bald enough invitation for a pretty speech?" "I thought you looked like a small pink bon-bon," responded Steve leisurely, and while the rest laughed at her discomfiture, Fat Joe leaned over and nudged Garry. "What'd I tell you?" he demanded. "What'd I tell you? Say, ain't he working well to-night?"