the patience it
had required to bear with her. He twirled her diamond ring on his
finger. Beatrice spied it.

"Why, that setting is just a little different from any I have," she
said, almost crossly. "I never saw it before."

She held out her hand, and the minor question of a dead wife and a
discarded husband was put aside until further ennui should overtake
them.

Aunt Belle opposed the divorce trip more vigorously than any one else
concerned. It seemed to her naught but a wild panorama of rattlesnakes
and Indians, with no opportunity for her daily massage. Besides, she
knew Beatrice's moods, and as time went on, between Constantine's
ridicule and his daughter's tempers, Aunt Belle was forced to work
hard to maintain a look of joyous contentment.

But there was nothing else for her to do unless she wished to be taken
to an old ladies' home. Her brother had said he would be delighted to
have her away, her pretenses and simpering nothings drove him to
distraction; and he had at last secured a man attendant who knew how
to dodge small articles skilfully for the compensation of a hundred
dollars a month and all he could pilfer. Like Beatrice, Aunt Belle
regretted that the actual divorce must lack a gorgeous setting; it was
quite commonplace. But one cannot have everything, and Beatrice had as
much as hinted that for her second wedding she would use the sunken
gardens at the Villa Rosa and wear a cloth-of-gold gown without a veil
but a smart aigrette of gilded feathers.

Beatrice shrank from saying good-bye to her father. It was more than
her usual dislike of entering the sick room. She had come to realize
that though her father caused her to be the sort of person she was, he
himself had remained both real and simple, succeeding by force of this
fact, and her contact with both Steve and Mary convinced her that she
did not wish to know real, everyday persons--they had nothing in
common with her and caused her to be restless and distressed. Gay was
as wild a mental tonic as she desired.

However, she bent solicitously over him and murmured the usual things:
"Take best care of yourself--miss you worlds--do be careful--will
write every day."

Constantine looked up at her, tears in the harsh eyes, which had lost
their black sparkle. "I'm sorry," he said, in childish fashion, as she
waited for an equally conventional reply. "Your mother would have
liked Steve."

"Papa!"--shocked at his lack of fairness--"how horrid!"