would be “court relations,” and might meet at lunch.  Mr. A. himself and his present wife would also be the late Mrs. B.’s and present Mrs. C.’s court relations.  Do you understand, Mamma?  It is the sort of ones connected with the case whom it would be unpleasant to speak about it to, but not the actual principals.  And when I asked Mrs. Van Brounker-Courtfield why she called them “court relations” she said because the divorce court was their common ground of connection, and it was a very good reason, and quite as true as calling people blood relations in London or Paris!  And that pleased Octavia very much, because she said it was the first subtle thing she had heard in New York.  But I must get on with the lunch.

You begin your clam broth (such an “exquit” soup, as Ermyntrude would call it), and the lady next you says she has been “just crazy” to meet you, and heaps of nice things that make you pleased with yourself and ready to enjoy your food.  You are just going to say something civil in return, and get a few words out, when your neighbour interrupts you with more nice things, and stacks of questions, and remarks about herself, all rather disconnected, and before you can speak again, the lady beyond, or even across the table, has interpolated with a sentence beginning always like this, “Now let me tell you something;” and long before she can get to the end of that, the person at her side has interrupted her.  And so it goes on.  It sounds as if I were telling you of another Mad Hatter’s tea party, Mamma, but it is not at all; and it is wonderful how much sense you can get out of it, and what amusing and clever bright things they say, though at the end you feel a little confused; and what with the smell of the innumerable flowers and the steam heated rooms, and the cigarettes, I can’t think how they have wits enough left to play bridge all the afternoon, as they do, with never a young man to wake them up.  Of course it is amusing for Octavia and me to see all this, as we are merely visitors, but fancy, Mamma! doing it as a part of one’s life!  Dressing up and making oneself splendid and attractive to meet only women!

They are not the least interested in politics or the pursuits of their husbands or brothers, and hardly any of them have the duties we have to do, like opening bazaars and giving away prizes and being heads of all sorts of organisations, nor do they have quantities of tenants’ welfare to look after, or be responsible for anything.  Of course they must pass the time somehow, and they all have secretaries who take every sort of ordinary trouble of notes and letters and things off their shoulders, so they ought to be awfully happy, oughtn’t they?  But they often have nerves or some imaginary disease or fad, and are frightfully restless, and Octavia says it is because in the natural development of the female of any country, numbers of these are really at the stage when they should be doing manual labour, according to their ancestry,