MISS LAUREL DALLAS was to be formally presented to New York society at a tea given at the home of her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Dallas, on the afternoon of November the twenty-first, from four until seven thirty. Several luncheons in her honor were scheduled for the week following the tea, also several dinners. The names of Miss Dallas’s various hostesses were mentioned. So was the fact that Brightswood, her parents’ summer home at Green Hills, Long Island, was to be opened over the Thanksgiving holiday, and filled with a house-party, including a number of this season’s débutantes. One of the most anticipated affairs of the season was to be the ball given for Miss Dallas in early January. So the papers said, so the various society columns repeated and repeated again, “Miss Dallas is one of the most popular débutantes of the season . . .” Oh, she’ll like that, thought Helen to herself, “whose picture is printed below.” She’ll cut that out, she smiled.

Helen avoided newspaper notoriety usually. Stephen wondered at her willingness to allow Laurel’s name to appear frequently in print, and in conspicuous print.

He wondered at another sudden oddity of Helen’s. The servants wondered at it, too. In fact it was one of the servants who brought it to his attention. Twice, lately, upon arriving home in the late afternoon, he had noticed that the shades in the house were not all drawn. He had been able to look into Helen’s room on the second floor, and see Laurel seated under the light, at the piano, playing. He spoke to the parlor-maid.

“I know, sir. It hardly seems safe, sir. But it is Mrs. Dallas’s orders, sir.”

Later to Stephen, Helen explained, “But it looks so pretty from the street. Why shut in all our loveliness? I’ll run the risk of burglars.”

Even on the afternoon of Laurel’s tea, Helen ordered the shades raised. She went even further. With her own hands she pulled back the lace curtains in the bay-window where she and Laurel were going to stand to receive their guests.

“It looks out only on the alley,” she shrugged.

4

IT RAINED ON the morning of Laurel’s tea. It rained in torrents.

“Gracious, don’t it pour!” exclaimed Stella for the dozenth time to the woman next to her, and for the dozenth time to herself, ’Twon’t make any difference, though. They’ve all got limousines. Then out loud again, “Gracious, don’t it pour!”

Every few minutes she looked up from the machine which she had been feeding with coarse white cambric all the morning, and gazed anxiously out of the streaked window beside her toward the building opposite, against the dark background of which she could see the rain sweeping.