But for the present, at least, Stafford gave no indication of regretting anything.  On the contrary, he and his young wife had come back from Europe in the highest of spirits, and immediately after their return to New York the millionaire proceeded to convince his critics of their error by throwing open his new house and entertaining on a lavish scale.  For some time before his marriage Stafford had realized that his old apartment, comfortable as it was for the bachelor, would be quite inadequate for a married couple; so, getting rid of his lease, he had bought further down the Avenue near Seventy-second street a fine American basement house.  It was a large modern residence, exquisitely furnished and supplied with every luxury money could buy.  Virginia’s private suite was particularly beautiful, being decorated in white and gold, in imitation of Queen Marie Antoinette’s apartments at the Little Trianon.

To Virginia this new life of luxury and pleasure was like a chapter from the “Arabian Nights.”  It seemed unreal, like some fantastic dream from which, sooner or later, there must be an abrupt awakening.  For years she had been so accustomed to the gnawing anxieties of poverty that this sudden superfluity of wealth fairly stunned and overwhelmed her.  Stafford, apparently more infatuated every day, took the keenest delight in pleasing her.  Everything that he thought would add to her happiness was done.  He showered her with costly presents, giving her wonderful diamond tiaras, superb pearl necklaces and other gems until her jewels were soon the talk of New York.  She had carte blanche at Fifth Avenue dressmakers and milliners; she had her French maid, her hairdresser, her automobile and her box at the opera.  He forced open for her the doors of society and, once inside the exclusive circle, it was not long before Virginia made friends on her own account.  People had expected to see a bold, coarse adventuress; instead, they were charmed by a modest, refined young woman who, intellectually at least, was their superior.  Everybody received her with open arms.  The men classed her as pretty and chic; the women declared she dressed divinely and gave exquisite dinners.  Before long, society arrived at the conclusion that Robert Stafford had not made such a mess of his matrimonial venture, after all.

The months went by so gayly and so quickly that it was the greatest surprise to Virginia when one day she realized that she would soon celebrate the second anniversary of her wedding.  She was so taken up with one fashionable function after another that she had no time to think.  Sometimes in the midst of her social activities, she stopped to ask herself if she was really happy, if this nerve-racking existence of idleness and pleasure—­with its bridge parties, its dinners, its opera and theatre-going—­was the kind of life she had dreamed of in her girlhood days.  Sometimes she felt a longing, a yearning for a more useful existence, something nobler, higher.