Looking back upon this dinner of the Delancys, the student of human affairs can see how Providence uses small means for the accomplishment of its purposes.  Of all our social contrivances, the formal dinner is probably the cause of more anxiety in the arrangement, of more weariness in the performance, and usually of less satisfaction in the retrospect than any other social function.  However carefully the guests are selected, it lacks the spontaneity that gives intellectual zest to the chance dining together of friends.  This Delancy party was made up for reasons which are well understood, and it seemed to have been admirably well selected; and yet the moment it assembled it was evident that it could not be very brilliant or very enjoyable.  Doubtless you, madam, would have arranged it differently, and not made it up of such incongruous elements.

As a matter of fact, scarcely one of those present would not have had more enjoyment somewhere else.  Father Damon, whose theory was that the rich needed saving quite as much as the poor, would nevertheless have been in better spirits sitting down to a collation with the working-women in Clinton Place.  It was a good occasion for the cynical observation of Mr. Mavick, but it was not a company that he could take in hand and impress with his mysterious influence in public affairs.  Henderson was not in the mood, and would have had much more ease over a chop and a bottle of half-and-half with Uncle Jerry.  Carmen, socially triumphant, would have been much more in her element at a petit souper of a not too fastidious four.  Mrs. Schuyler Blunt was in the unaccustomed position of having to maintain a not too familiar and not too distant line of deportment.  Edith and Jack felt the responsibility of having put an incongruous company on thin conventional ice.  It was only the easy-going Miss Tavish and two or three others who carried along their own animal spirits and love of amusement who enjoyed the chance of a possible contretemps.

And yet the dinner was providentially arranged.  If these people had not met socially, this history would have been different from what it must be.  The lives of several of them were appreciably modified by this meeting.  It is too much to say that Father Damon’s notion of the means by which such men as Henderson succeed was changed, but personal contact with the man may have modified his utterances about him, and he may have turned his mind to the uses to which his wealth might be applied rather than to the means by which he obtained it.  Carmen’s ingenuous interest in his work may have encouraged the hope that at least a portion of this fortune might be rescued to charitable uses.  For Carmen, dining with Mrs. Schuyler Blunt was a distinct gain, and indirectly opened many other hitherto exclusive doors.  That lady may not have changed her opinion about Carmen, but she was good-natured and infected by the incoming social tolerance; and as to Henderson, she declared