life, the climate, the
inconveniences, the absence of what she was accustomed to. She was dead
tired of it all. I can understand that. And I--I didn't know what to do
about it. . . . So we drifted; and the catastrophe came very quickly.
Let me tell you something; a West Pointer, an Annapolis man, knows what
sort of life he's going into and what he is to expect when he marries.
Usually, too, he marries into the Army or Navy set; and the girl knows,
too, what kind of a married life that means.

"But I didn't. Neither did Alixe. And we went under; that's
all--fighting each other heart and soul to the end. . . . Is she happy
with Ruthven? I never knew him--and never cared to. I suppose they go
about in town among the yellow set. Do they?"

"Yes. I've met Alixe once or twice. She was perfectly composed--formal
but unembarrassed. She has shifted her milieu somewhat--it began with
the influx of Ruthven's friends from the 'yellow' section of the younger
married set--the Orchils, Fanes, Minsters, and Delmour-Carnes. Which is
all right if she'd stay there. But in town you're likely to encounter
anybody where the somebodies of one set merge into the somebodies of
another. And we're always looking over our fences, you know. . . . By
the way," she added cheerfully, "I'm dipping into the younger set myself
to-night--on Eileen's account. I brought her out Thursday and I'm giving
a dinner for her to-night."

"Who's Eileen?" he asked.

"Eileen? Why, don't you--why, of _course_, you don't know yet that I've
taken Eileen for my own. I didn't want to write you; I wanted first to
see how it would turn out; and when I saw that it was turning out
perfectly, I thought it better to wait until you could return and hear
all about it from me, because one can't write that sort of thing--"

"Nina!"

"What, dear?" she said, startled.

"Who the dickens _is_ Eileen?"

"Philip! You are precisely like Austin; you grow impatient of
preliminary details when I'm doing my very best attempting to explain
just as clearly as I can. Now I will go on and say that Eileen is Molly
Erroll's daughter, and the courts appointed Austin and me guardians for
her and for her brother Gerald."

"Oh!"

"Now is it clear to you?"

"Yes," he said, thinking of the tragedy which had left the child so
utterly alone in the world, save for her brother and a distant kinship
by marriage with the Gerards.

For a while he sat brooding, arms loosely folded, immersed once