In fact, six months before, when Mrs.De Peyster desired to introduce and honor the Duke de Crecy in a larger way than her residence permitted, it was at the Dauphin that she had elected to give the ball that had brought her so much deferential praise--which occasion was the first and only time she had departed from her strict old-family practice of limiting her social functions to such as could be accommodated within her own house.

She had then been distinctly pleased; one could hardly have expected good breeding upon so large a scale.

And her present subconscious impression of the Dauphin was that it was ducal, if not regal, in its reserved splendor, in its manner of subdued, punctilious ceremony.
She could remain at the Dauphin, in seclusion, until she had time to think.

Then she could act.
As she sped smoothly up Fifth Avenue--her second ride on the Avenue that night--she began, in the cushioned privacy of the taxi, to recover somewhat from the panic of dire necessity that had driven them forth.

Other matters began to flash spasmodically across the screen of her mind.