Mr.Harley possessed an excellent appetite that New Year's evening; it might have been diminished of edge had his ignorance been less.
Mrs.Hanway-Harley looked for Storri to drop in, but since the promise of his coming was known only to herself--she did not care to furnish the news of it to Dorothy the rebellious--the failure of that nobleman to appear bred no general dismay.

The dinner went soberly forward, and Mr.
Harley especially derived great benefit therefrom.
Mr.Harley had just finished his final glass of wine, and was saying something fictional about a gentleman at the Arlington upon whom he ought to call, and what a bore calling upon the fictional gentleman would be, when Storri's note came into his hands.

He glanced it over, and then seized upon it as the very thing to furnish a look of integrity to his story of the mythical one.

He gave the note a petulant slap with the back of his fingers, and remarked: "I declare! Here he is writing me to come at once." Mr.Harley got into his hat and coat, and then got into the street, observing as he did so that he feared the business in hand might keep him far into the morning.
The guilty truth was this: Mr.Harley concealed a private purpose to play cards with a select circle of statesmen who owned a taste to begin the year with draw poker at Chamberlin's.

However, there existed in the destinies of Mr.Harley not the faintest call for all this elaboration of deceit.