“I’m not going to marry for the sake of getting married, mother.”

“Of course not.  But you have a good bit of money.  You’ll have much more when I’m gone.  And money carries responsibility with it.”

He glanced at her, looked away, rapped a fork on the table cloth.

“It takes two to make a marriage, mother.”

He closed up after that, but she had learned what she wanted.

At three o’clock that afternoon the Sayre limousine stopped in front of Nina’s house, and Mrs. Sayre, in brilliant pink and a purple hat, got out.  Leslie, lounging in a window, made the announcement.

“Here’s the Queen of Sheba,” he said.  “I’ll go upstairs and have a headache, if you don’t mind.”

He kissed Nina and departed hastily.  He was feeling extremely gentle toward Nina those days and rather smugly virtuous.  He considered that his conscience had brought him back and not a very bad fright, which was the fact, and he fairly exuded righteousness.

It was the great lady’s first call, and Nina was considerably uplifted.  It was for such moments as this one trained servants and put Irish lace on their aprons, and had decorators who stood off with their heads a little awry and devised backgrounds for one’s personality.

“What a delightful room!” said Mrs. Sayre.  “And how do you keep a maid as trim as that?”

“I must have service,” Nina replied.  “The butler’s marching in a parade or something.  How nice of you to come and see our little place.  It’s a band-box, of course.”

Mrs. Sayre sat down, a gross disharmony in the room, but a solid and not unkindly woman for all that.

“My dear,” she said, “I am not paying a call.  Or not only that.  I came to talk to you about something.  About Wallace and your sister.”

Nina was gratified and not a little triumphant.

“I see,” she said.  “Do you mean that they are fond of one another?”

“Wallace is.  Of course, this talk is between ourselves, but—­I’m going to be frank, Nina.  I want Wallie to marry, and I want him to marry soon.  You and I know that the life of an unattached man about town is full of temptations.  I want him to settle down.  I’m lonely, too, but that’s not so important.”

Nina hesitated.

“I don’t know about Elizabeth.  She’s fond of Wallie, as who isn’t?  But lately—­”

“Yes?”

“Well, for the last few days I have been wondering.  She doesn’t talk, you know.  But she has been seeing something of Dick Livingstone.”

“Doctor Livingstone!  She’d be throwing herself away!”

“Yes, but she’s like that.  I mean, she isn’t ambitious.  We’ve always expected her to throw herself away; at least I have.”

A half hour later Leslie, upstairs, leaned over the railing to see if there were any indications of departure.  The door was open, and Mrs. Sayre evidently about to take her leave.  She was saying: