balancing carelessly on a chair-arm, showed the exquisite curves
of a woman slow to develop, who is approaching the height of her
beauty, and from the tip of her white shoe to the poppies on her
soft straw hat there was that distinction in her clothing that
betrayed her to be one of the few who may be always individual yet
always in the fashion. She was a woman, quick, dynamic, impatient,
who vitalized the very atmosphere in which she moved, challenging
life by endless tests and measures, scornful of admiration, and
ambitious, even in this recognized ambition of finding herself
beautiful, prominent, and a rich man's wife, for something further
and greater, she knew not what. She was an important figure in
this world of hers; her word was authority, her decree law. Never
was censure so quick as hers, never criticism so biting, or satire
so witty. No human emotion was too sacred to form a target for her
glancing arrows, nor was any affection deep enough to arouse in
her anything but doubt and scorn.

"I don't want any tea, thank you, Peter," she said now, in the
astonishingly rich voice that seemed to fill the words with new
meaning. "And I won't allow the Infant to have any--no, Billy, you
shall not. You've got a complexion, child; respect it. Besides,
you've just had some. Besides, we're here for only two seconds--
it's six o'clock. We're looking for Clarence--we seek a husband
fond, a parent dear--"

"Clarence hasn't showed up here at all to-day," said Peter
Pomeroy, stretching back comfortably in his chair, appreciative
eyes upon Clarence's wife. "Shame, too, for we had some good golf.
Course is in splendid condition. George beat me three up and two
to play, but I don't bear any malice. Here I am signing for his