Turning, she headed for the escalator. It had been Lisa's idea to decorate every floor in a different color, and to key the hues according to the merchandise on the particular floor. Meredith thought it was very effective— particularly when she stepped off the escalator on the second floor, which contained the fur salon and designer gowns. Here, all the white trees were trimmed in a soft mauve with shimmering gold bows. Directly in front of the escalators, seated in front of his "house," was a Santa Claus clad in white and gold. On his knee was a mannequin—a beautiful woman wrapped in a magnificent french lace peignoir who was pointing prettily to a $25,000 mink coat lined in mauve.

The smile that had been lurking in Meredith's heart dawned across her face as she recognized that the aura of extravagant luxury created by the display was a subtle and effective invitation to shoppers who ventured onto this floor to indulge themselves with similar extravagance. Judging by the large number of men looking at the furs and the many women trying on the designer gowns, the invitation was being accepted. On this floor, each of the designers were given their own salon, where their collections were displayed. Meredith walked down the main aisle, nodding occasionally to those employees whom she knew. In the Geoffrey Beene salon, two stout women in mink coats were admiring a slinky blue-beaded gown with a $7,000 price tag. "You'll look like a sack of potatoes in that, Margaret," one of them warned the other. Ignoring her, the woman turned to the sales-clerk. "I don't suppose," she said, "you have this in a size twenty?"

In the next salon, a woman was urging her daughter, a girl of about eighteen, to try on a velvet Valentino gown, while a salesclerk hovered discreetly in the background, waiting to assist. "If you like it," the daughter replied, flinging herself down onto the silk sofa, "then you wear it. I'm not going to your stupid party. I told you I wanted to spend Christmas in Switzerland."

"I know, darling," her mother replied, looking guilty and apologetic as she spoke to the sulking teenager, "but just this once we thought it would be nice to spend Christmas at home together."

Meredith glanced at her watch, realized it was already one o'clock, and headed for the bank of elevators so that she could find Lisa and share her news. She'd spent the morning at the architect's office going over the plans for the Houston store, and she had a busy afternoon ahead of her.

The design room was in actuality an enormous storeroom located in the basement, beneath the street level, that was crammed with design tables, dismembered mannequins, giant bolts of cloth, and every conceivable prop that had been used in the display windows during the last decade. Meredith wended her way through the chaos with all the familiar expertise of a former inhabitant—which she was. As part of her early training, she'd worked in every department in the store. "Lisa?" she called out, and a dozen heads of helpers who worked for Lisa glanced up. "Lisa?"

"Over here!" a muffled voice shouted, then the skirt around the table was thrust aside and Lisa's head of curly red hair poked out. "Now what?" the voice demanded irritably, the hazel eyes peering at Meredith's legs. "How can I get anything done with all these interruptions?"

"Beats me," Meredith cheerfully replied, perching her hip on the top of the table and grinning at Lisa's startled face. "I've never figured out how you find anything back here at all, let alone create it."

"Hi," Lisa replied, looking sheepish as she crawled out from beneath the table on all fours. "I've been trying to rig some wires under there so we can have the table tipped for the Christmas dinner treatment we're doing in the furniture department. How was your date with Parker last night?"

"Oh, fine," Meredith answered. "The usual, more or less," she lied, making a great show of fiddling with the lapel of her coat with her left hand which now bore a sapphire engagement ring. She'd told Lisa yesterday that she had a hunch Parker was going to propose.

Lisa plunked her fists on her hips. "The usual! God, Mer, he was divorced two years ago, and you've been going out with him for over nine months. You spend almost as much time with his daughters as he does. You're beautiful and intelligent—men fall over themselves when they get one look at you, but Parker has been looking you over' for months now—at very close range —and I think you're wasting your time on him. If the idiot was going to propose, he would have done it already—"

"He has," Meredith said with smiling triumph, but Lisa had launched into her favorite diatribe and it took a moment for Meredith's words to register. "He's all wrong for you anyway. You need somebody to pull you out of your conservative shell and make you do crazy, impulsive things—like voting for a Democrat just once, or going to the opera on Friday instead of Saturday. Parker is too much like you, he's too methodical, too steady, too cautious, too— You're kidding! He proposed?"

Meredith nodded, and Lisa's gaze finally dropped to the dark sapphire in its antique setting. "Your engagement ring?" she asked, snatching Meredith's hand, but as she examined the ring, her smile vanished behind a puzzled frown. "What is this?"

"It's a sapphire," Meredith replied, unperturbed by Lisa's visible lack of enthusiasm for the antique piece. For one thing, she'd always liked Lisa's bluntness. Secondly, not even Meredith, who loved Parker, could convince herself the ring was dazzlingly beautiful. It was fine, and old, and a family heirloom; she was perfectly content with that.

"I figured it's a sapphire, but what are those smaller stones? They don't sparkle like good diamonds."

"They're an old-fashioned cut—not so many facets. The ring is old. It belonged to Parker's grandmother."

"He couldn't afford a new one, hmm?" she teased. "You know," she continued, "until I met you, I used to think people with money bought gorgeous things and price was no object. .. ."

"Only new money does that," Meredith chided. "Old money is quiet money."

"Yeah, well, old money could learn something from new money. You people keep things until they're worn out. If I ever get engaged and the guy tries to foist off his grandmother's worn-out ring on me, it's all over right then. And what," she continued outrageously, "is the setting made of? It isn't very shiny."

"It's platinum," Meredith replied on a suffocated laugh.

"I knew it—I suppose it will never wear out, which is why whoever bought this thing two hundred years ago had it made out of that."