Mrs. Lancaster laughed.

“Ferdy—­” she began, and then paused irresolute.  “However—­”

“Well, what is it?  Say it.”

“You ought not to go there so often as you do.”

“Why?” His eyes were full of insolence.

“Good-by.  Drive home,” she said to the coachman, in a tone intentionally loud enough for her friend to hear.

Ferdy Wickersham strolled on down the street, and a few minutes later was leaning in at the door of Mrs. Wentworth’s carriage, talking very earnestly to the lady inside.

Mr. Wickersham’s attentions to Louise Wentworth had begun to be the talk of the town.  Young Mrs. Wentworth was not a person to allow herself to be shelved.  She did not propose that the older lady who bore that name should be known by it.  She declared she would play second fiddle to no one.  But she discovered that the old lady who lived in the old mansion on Washington Square was “Mrs. Wentworth,” and that Mrs. Wentworth occupied a position from which she was not to be moved.  After a little she herself was known as “Mrs. Norman.”  It was the first time Mrs. Norman had ever had command of much money.  Her mother had made a good appearance and dressed her daughter handsomely, but to carry out her plans she had had to stint and scrape to make both ends meet.  Mrs. Caldwell told one of her friends that her rings knew the way to the pawnbroker’s so well that if she threw them in the street they would roll into his shop.

This struggle Louise had witnessed with that easy indifference which was part her nature and part her youth.  She had been brought up to believe she was a beauty, and she did believe it.  Now that she had the chance, she determined to make the most of her triumph.  She would show people that she knew how to spend money; embellishment was the aim of her life, and she did show them.  Her toilets were the richest; her equipage was the handsomest and best appointed.  Her entertainments soon were among the most splendid in the city.

Those who were accustomed to wealth and to parade wondered both at Mrs. Norman’s tastes and at her gratification of them.

All the town applauded.  They had had no idea that the Wentworths, as rich as they knew them to be, had so much money.

“She must have Aladdin’s lamp,” they said.  Only old Mrs. Wentworth looked grave and disapproving at the extravagance of her daughter-in-law.  Still she never said a word of it, and when the grandson came she was too overjoyed to complain of anything.

It was only of late that people had begun to whisper of the frequency with which Ferdy Wickersham was seen with Mrs. Norman.  Certain it was that he was with her a great deal.

That evening Alice Lancaster was dining with the Norman Wentworths.  She was equally good friends with them and with their children, who on their part idolized her and considered her to be their especial property.  Her appearance was always the signal for a romp.  Whenever she went to the Wentworths’ she always paid a visit to the nursery, from which she would return breathless and dishevelled, with an expression of mingled happiness and pain in her blue eyes.  Louise Wentworth knew well why the longing look was there, and though usually cold and statuesque, she always softened to Alice Lancaster then more than she was wont to do.