Stone led her to the dance floor and they danced. Stephanie was brunette and small, around five-two, Stone thought, without the heels. “How did you and Herbie meet?” he asked her.

“At P.J. Clarke’s, at the bar,” she replied. “I had just come back from a year abroad after graduating from Smith.”

“Are you going to have a career?” he asked.

“I’m joining my father’s firm after the honeymoon,” Stephanie replied. “I’ll be working as a trader, to start.”

“Are you his heir apparent?”

“I am.”

“I hope you’ll take charge of Herbie’s money,” Stone said. “He can be rather impulsive in the way he spends it.”

“Oh, I already have,” she replied, laughing, “and just in time, too.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

“Herbie has such a good heart,” she said, “but no head for figures, unless they’re female. I’m going to make him a rich man.”

“I thought he was already rich,” Stone said.

“He’s down to his last ten million after the lottery win,” she said. “In my family, that’s not rich—that’s slightly well-off. I’ve put him on an allowance, and I’m redecorating the apartment with my own money and some family things.”

“I’m glad to hear that, too,” Stone said, remembering what the apartment had looked like on his only visit there.

“Oddly enough, Herbie has very good taste in art. We’ve already bought some pictures he chose. He’s not so good on furnishings and fabrics, though.”

“Herbie has very good taste in wives, too,” Stone said.

She laughed again. “Thank you, Stone. By the way, I’ve paired you with my aunt at dinner, my mother’s recently widowed sister, Adele. You’re at table number one, with us.”

“How delightful,” Stone said, trying not to clench his teeth.

Stone returned the bride to her new husband and got himself a glass of very good champagne. He sneaked a look at the bottle: Veuve Clicquot Grande Dame. If they were giving this to what looked like about seven hundred people in the ballroom, Jack Gunn had done very well indeed in business.

Stone wandered through the crowd, and they were a very presentable lot. Herbie had fallen into a pot of jam, he figured, and he wondered how long it would take before the boy screwed up.

The orchestra stopped, and a headwaiter took the microphone. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “dinner is served.”

Stone found his way to table number one, where he located his place card, between Stephanie and her widowed aunt Adele. The bride arrived with Herbie and introduced her father, Jack, and her mother, Christine, who turned out to be the much younger woman he had seen Gunn dancing with.

“Good to meet you, Stone,” Gunn said in a velvety bass-baritone voice.