The newcomer walked toward her, their glances crossing.  Tony stood very still, but she had an unaccountable sensation of going to meet him, as if he had drawn her to him, magnet-wise, by his strange, sweeping look.  They were introduced.  He bowed low in courtly old world fashion over the girl’s hand.

“I am enchanted to know Miss Holiday,” he said.  His voice was as unusual as the rest of him, deep-throated, musical, vibrant—­an unforgettable voice it seemed to Tony who for a moment seemed to have lost her own.

“I shall sit beside Miss Tony to-night, Carla,” he added.  It was not a question, not a plea.  It was clear assertion.

“Not to-night, Alan.  You are between Aunt Lottie and Mary Frances Day.  You liked Mary Frances yesterday.  You flirted with her outrageously last night.”

He shrugged.

“Ah, but that was last night, my dear.  And this is to-night.  And I have seen your Miss Tony.  That alters everything, even your seating arrangements.  Change me, Carlotta.”

Carlotta laughed and capitulated.  Alan’s highhanded tactics always amused her.

“Not that you deserve it,” she said.  “Don’t be too nice to him, Tony.  He is not a nice person at all.”

So it happened that Tony found herself at dinner between Ted’s friend, and her own, Hal Underwood, and this strange, impossible, arbitrary, new personage who had hypnotized her into unwonted silence at their first meeting.

She had recovered her usual poise by this time, however, and was quite prepared to keep Alan Massey in due subjection if necessary.  She did not like masterful men.  They always roused her own none too dormant willfulness.

As they sat down he bent over to her.

“You are glad I made Carlotta put us together,” he said, and this, too, was no question, but an assertion.

Tony was in arms in a flash.

“On the contrary, I am exceedingly sorry she gave in to you.  You seem to be altogether too accustomed to having your own way as it is.”  And rather pointedly she turned her pretty shoulder on her too presuming neighbor and proceeded to devote her undivided attention for two entire courses to Hal Underwood.

But, with the fish, Hal’s partner on the other side, a slim young person in a glittering green sequined gown, suggesting a fish herself, or, at politest, a mermaid, challenged his notice and Tony returned perforce to her left-hand companion who had not spoken a single word since she had snubbed him as Tony was well aware, though she had seemed so entirely absorbed in her own conversation with Hal.

His gray-green eyes smiled imperturbably into hers.

“Am I pardoned?  Surely I have been punished enough for my sins, whatever they may have been.”

“I hope so,” said Tony.  “Are you always so disagreeable?”

“I am never disagreeable when I am having my own way.  I am always good when I am happy.  At this moment I am very, very good.”