sting.
Her employer was conservative enough in an unmannerly age to insist on
answering all personal correspondence with her own hand; what passed
between her and her few intimates was known to herself alone. But she
carried on, in addition, an animated correspondence with numberless
frauds--antique dealers, charities, professional poor relations,
social workers, and others of that ilk--which proved tremendously
diverting to her amanuensis, especially when it transpired that Mrs.
Gosnold had a mind and temper of her own, together with a vocabulary
amply adequate to her powers of ironic observation. This last gift
came out strongly in her diary, a daily record of her various
interests and activities which she dictated, interspersing dry details
with many an acid annotation.

When all was finished Sally found she had been busied for little
more than two hours, and was given to understand that her duties would
be made more burdensome only by the addition of a little light
bookkeeping when she settled down to the routine of regular
employment.

Of the alleged high play, at cards or otherwise, she had yet, at this
third midnight, to see any real evidence. Mrs. Gosnold most
undoubtedly played a stiff game of bridge, but she played it with a
masterly facility, the outcome of long practice and profound study;
her losses, when she lost, were minimised. Nor was there ever a sign
of cheating that came under Sally's observation. Everybody played who
didn't dance, and vice versa, but nobody seemed to play for the mere
sake of winning money. And while the influx of week-end guests by the
Friday evening boat brought the number at Gosnold House up to
twenty-two, they were all apparently amiable, self-centred folk of
long and intimate acquaintance with one another as well as with their
hostess and all her neighbours on the Island. Of that dubious crew of
adventurers she had been led to expect there was never a hint.

Such provision as their hostess made for her guests' entertainment and
amusement they patronised or ignored with equal nonchalance, according
to individual whim; they commanded breakfasts for all hours of the
morning, and they lunched at home and dined abroad, or reversed
the order, or sought all their meals in the homes of neighbouring
friends, quite without notice or apology. Such was the modish manner
of that summer of 1915--a sedulous avoidance of anything resembling
acknowledgment of obligation to those who enterta