Business: Party at Lynnewood

There were 300 guests at Lynnewood Hall one day last week, more than could be seated in the dining room with its dark red French tapestries and the majestic bust of the great Prince de Conde. The ballroom, with its Louis XV and XVI furniture, its Chinese vases, its four crystal chandeliers, was filled with tables. Joseph Early Widener, master of the Hall, was having a large party.

If an uninvited guest had mingled with that company, first amusing them with witticisms but finally enacting a Poe-like "Masque of the Red Death," there would...