Del was still absent-minded as she answered:  “It’s too absurd.  People are so censorious, so low-minded.”

“They are,” rejoined Mrs. Hastings.  “And, I’m sorry to say, as a rule they’re right.”

The curve of Del’s delicate eyebrows and of her lips straightened.

“All the trouble comes through our having nothing to do,” pursued Henrietta, disregarding those signs that her “meddling” was unwelcome.  “The idle women!  We ought to be busy at something useful—­you and I and the rest of ’em.  Then we’d not be tempted to kill time doing things that cause gossip, and may cause scandal.”  Seeing that Adelaide was about to make some curt retort, she added:  “Now, don’t pretend, Del.  You know, yourself, that they’re always getting into mischief and getting the men into mischief.”

“Don’t you ever feel, Henrietta, that we’re simply straws in the strong wind?”

“Fate sometimes does force mischief on men and women,” was Henrietta’s retort, “and it ceases to be mischief—­becomes something else, I’m not sure just what.  But usually fate has nothing to do with the matter.  It’s we ourselves that course for mischief, like a dog for rabbits.”

Del, in sudden disdain of evasion, faced her with, “Well, Henrietta, what of it?”

Mrs. Hastings elevated and lowered her shoulders.  “Simply that you’re seeing too much of Ross—­too much for his good, if not for your own.”

Del’s sunshade was revolving impatiently.

“It’s as plain as black on white,” continued Mrs. Hastings, “that he’s madly in love with you—­in love as only an experienced man can be with an experienced and developed woman.”

“Well, what of it?” Del’s tone was hostile, defiant.

“You can’t abruptly stop seeing him.  Everyone’d say you and he were meeting secretly.”

“Really!”

“But you can be careful how you treat him.  You can show him, and everybody, that there’s nothing in it.  You must—­” Henrietta hesitated, dared; “you must be just friendly, as you are with Arden and the rest of the men.”

Hiram’s daughter was scarlet.  Full a minute, and a very full minute, of silence.  Then Adelaide said coldly:  “Thank you.  And now that you’ve freed your mind I hope you’ll keep it free for your own affairs.”

“Ouch!” cried Henrietta, making a wry face.  And she devoted the rest of the afternoon to what she realized, at the parting, was the vain task of mollifying Del.  She knew that thenceforth she and Adelaide would drift apart; and she was sorry, for she liked her—­liked to talk with her, liked to go about with her.  Adelaide’s beauty attracted the men, and a male audience was essential to Henrietta’s happiness; she found the conversation of women—­the women she felt socially at ease with—­tedious, and their rather problematic power of appreciation limited to what came from men.  As she grew older, and less and less pleasing to the eye, the men showed more and more clearly how they