Not that people occupied themselves with Diane or her affairs!  Her place in the hurrying, scrambling social throng had been so unobtrusive that, now that she no longer filled it, she was easily forgotten.  Among the few who paid her the tribute of recollection there was the generally received impression that Derek Pruyn, having discovered her relations with the Marquis de Bienville—­relations which, so they said, had been well known in Paris, in the days when she was still some one—­had dismissed her from her position in his household.  That was natural enough, and there was no further reason for remembering her.  Having disappeared into the limbo of the unfortunate, she was as far beyond the mental range of those who retained their blessings as souls that have passed are out of sight of men and women who still walk the earth.  For this very reason she called out in Mrs. Wappinger that motherly good-nature which was only partially warped by the ambition for social success.  On more than one of her “off-days” she had lured Diane out of her refuge in University Place, treating her with all the kindness she could bestow without causing disparaging comment upon herself.  On the present occasion she was the more desirous of her company because of the fact that, as she expressed it herself, she had “sniffed something going on.”

[Illustration:  DRAWN BY FRANK CRAIG IT WAS WHAT MRS. WAPPINGER CALLED AN “OFF DAY”]

“As I tell you,” she repeated, “I’ve heard nothing, and seen nothing; I’ve just sniffed it.  If you were to ask me how, I couldn’t explain it to you any more than I can say how I get the scent of this climbing heliotrope.  But I do get it; and I do know something is in the wind, more than what is told to you and I.”

“One can only hope that it will be nothing foolish,” Diane murmured, guardedly.

“It will be something foolish,” Mrs. Wappinger declared, “and you may take my word for it.  Derek Pruyn can’t arrogate to himself the powers of the Lord above any more than we can.  If he thinks he can stop young blood from running he’ll find out he’s wrong.”

It was the first mention of his name that Diane had heard in many weeks, and at the sound her hand trembled in such a way that she was obliged to put down untasted the cup she had half raised to her lips.

“He’s not an unkind man,” she found voice to say; “he’s only a mistaken one.  He has one of those natures capable of dealing magnificently with great affairs, but helpless in the trivial matters of every day.  He’s like the people who see well at a distance, but become confused over the objects right under their eyes.”

“Then the farther you keep away from that man the better the view he’ll take of you.  It’s what I’d say to Carli if he’d ask for my advice.”

“Does that mean,” Diane ventured to inquire, “that you don’t want him to marry Dorothea?”

“I certainly do not.  If there were no other reason, she’s the sort of girl to make me put one foot into the grave, whether I want to or no; and it stands to reason that I don’t want to be squelched one hour before my time.”