“Naturally; but I fancy you’d find her a sweeter girl than you might suppose.”

“So she may be, dear; but I’ve spent too much money on Carli to wish to see him force his way into a family where he isn’t wanted.”

This was the text of Mrs. Wappinger’s discourse, not only on the present occasion, but on the subsequent “off-days,” when Diane was induced to visit Waterwild.

“Whatever is going on, Reggie Bradford’s in it,” she confided to Diane some few weeks later.

“Is that the fat young man with the big laugh?”

“Yes; and one of the greatest catches in New York.  Carli tells me he’s wild about Marion Grimston, and I can see for myself that Mrs. Bayford is playing him against that Frenchman.  She’ll get the title if she can, but if not, she’ll fall back on the money.”

“It’s a pretty safe alternative,” Diane smiled, making an effort to speak without betraying her feelings.

“Reggie is a good-natured boy,” Mrs. Wappinger pursued, “but a regular water-pipe.  If you want to get anything out of him you’ve only got to turn the faucet.  It’s just as well that he is; because whatever Carli is up to Reggie knows, and what Reggie knows Marion Grimston knows.  If ever you see her—­”

“Oh, but I don’t—­not now.”

“That’s a pity.  If you did, you could pump her.”

“I’m afraid I’m not much good at that sort of thing.”

“Well, I am, when I get a chance.  I’m bound to find out, somehow; and there are more ways of killing a cat than by giving it poison.”

A few weeks later still Mrs. Wappinger informed Diane that Dorothea Pruyn was not happy.

“The Thoroughgoods told the Louds,” she explained, “and the Louds told me.  Her father thinks she has given in to him; but she hasn’t—­not an inch.  He keeps her like a jailer; and she acts like a convict—­always with an eye open for some way of escape.  That man no more understands women than he does making pie.”

“I’ve always noticed that the really strong men rarely do.  There’s almost invariably something petty about a man to whom a woman isn’t a puzzle and a mystery.”

“If it comes to a puzzle and a mystery, I don’t know where you’d find a greater one than Derek Pruyn himself.  After the way he’s acted—­and treated people—­”

Diane flushed, but kept her emotions sufficiently under control to be able to follow her usual plan of straightforward speaking.

“If you mean me, Mrs. Wappinger, I ought to say that Mr. Pruyn has done nothing for which I can blame him.  He was placed in a situation with which only a very subtle intelligence could have dealt, and I respect him the more for not having had it.  It’s generally the man who is most competent in his own domain who is most likely to blunder when he gets into the woman’s; and I, for one, would rather have him do it.  I’ve had to suffer because of it, and so has Dorothea; and yet that doesn’t make me like it less.”