arry said,

Delilah nodded. "Yes. It has taken me several years to find out some
things." She looked at Grace and smiled. "It didn't take you years,
did it?"

Grace smiled back. The two women were as far apart as the poles.
Grace represented the old Knickerbocker stock, Lilah, a later grafting.
Grace studied clothes because it pleased her to make fashions a fine
art. Delilah studied to impress. But each one saw in the other some
similarity of taste and of mood, and the smile that they exchanged was
that of comprehension.

Aunt Frances did not approve of Delilah. She said so to Grace going
home.

"My dear, they live on the West Side--in a big house on the Drive. My
calling list stops east of the Park."

Grace shrugged. "Mother," she said, "I learned one thing in
Paris--that the only people worth knowing are the interesting people,
and whether they live on the Drive or in Dakota, I don't care. And
we've an awful lot of fossils in our set."

Mrs. Clendenning shifted the argument. "I don't see why General Dick
allows Leila to be so much with Miss Jeliffe."

"They were at school together, and the General and Mr. Jeliffe are old
friends."

Her mother shrugged. "Well, I hope that if we stay here for the winter
that they won't be forced upon us. Washington is such a city of
climbers, Grace."

Grace let the matter drop there. She had learned discretion. She and
her mother viewed life from different angles. To attempt to reconcile
these differences would mean, had always meant, strife and controversy,
and in these later years, Grace had steered her course toward serenity.
She had refused to be blown about by the storms of her mother's
prejudices. In the midst of the conventionality of her own social
training, she had managed to be untrammeled. In this she was more like
Mary than the others of her generation. And she loved Mary, and wanted
to see her happy.

"Mother," she asked abruptly, "who is this Roger Poole?"

Mrs. Clendenning told her that he was a lodger in the Tower Rooms--a
treasury clerk--a mere nobody.

Grace challenged the last statement. "He's a brilliant man," she said.
"I sat next to him at dinner. There's a mystery somewhere. He has an
air of authority, the ease of a man of the world."

"He is in love with Mary," said Mrs. Clendenning, "and he oughtn't to
be in the house."

"But Mary isn't in love with him--not yet."

"How do you know?"

In the darkness Grace smiled. H