the cool flag-paved
pergola at Waterwild, Mrs. Wappinger's place on Long Island. The
tea-table stood between them, and they lounged in wicker chairs. Framed
by marble pillars, and festooned from above by vines drooping from the
roof, there was a view of terraced lawns descending toward the sea.
Between the slightly overcrowded urns and statues there were bright
dashes of color, here of dahlias in full bloom, there of reddening
garlands of ampelopsis or Virginia creeper. It was what Mrs. Wappinger
called an "off-day," otherwise she could not have had Diane at
Waterwild. In her loyalty toward the deserted woman she seized those
opportunities when Carli was away, and she was certain of having no
other guests, "to have the poor thing down for the day, and give her a
good meal."

Not that people occupied themselves with Diane or her affairs! Her place
in the hurrying, scrambling social throng had been so unobtrusive that,
now that she no longer filled it, she was easily forgotten. Among the
few who paid her the tribute of recollection there was the generally
received impression that Derek Pruyn, having discovered her relations
with the Marquis de Bienville--relations which, so they said, had been
well known in Paris, in the days when she was still some one--had
dismissed her from her position in his household. That was natural
enough, and there was no further reason for remembering her. Having
disappeared into the limbo of the unfortunate, she was as far beyond the
mental range of those who retained their blessings as souls that have
passed are out of sight of men and women who still walk the earth. For
this very reason she called out in Mrs. Wappinger that motherly
good-nature which was only partially warped by the ambition for social
success. On more than one of her "off-days" she had lured Diane out of
her refuge in University Place, treating her with all the kindness she
could bestow without causing disparaging comment upon herself. On the
present occasion she was the more desirous of her company because of the
fact that, as she expressed it herself, she had "sniffed something going
on."

[Illustration: DRAWN BY FRANK CRAIG
IT WAS WHAT MRS. WAPPINGER CALLED AN "OFF DAY"]

"As I tell you," she repeated, "I've heard nothing, and seen nothing;
I've just sniffed it. If you were to ask me how, I couldn't explain it
to you any more than I can say how I get the scent of this climbing
heliotrope. But I do get it; and I do k