One Friday in January, two young women, one married, one single, one very pretty, and both well-dressed (most of the women who belonged to the Fairbridge social set dressed well) were being driven by Jim Fitzgerald a distance of a mile or more, up a long hill.  The slope was gentle and languid, like nearly every slope in that part of the state, but that day it was menacing with ice.  It was one smooth glaze over the macadam.  Jim Fitzgerald, a descendant of a fine old family whose type had degenerated, sat hunched upon the driver’s seat, his loose jaw hanging, his eyes absent, his mouth open, chewing with slow enjoyment his beloved quid, while the reins lay slackly on the rusty black robe tucked over his knees.  Even a corner of that dragged dangerously near the right wheels of the coupe.  Jim had not sufficient energy to tuck it in firmly, although the wind was sharp from the northwest.

Alice Mendon paid no attention to it, but her companion, Daisy Shaw, otherwise Mrs. Sumner Shaw, who was of the tense, nervous type, had remarked it uneasily when they first started.  She had rapped vigorously upon the front window, and a misty, rather beautiful blue eye had rolled interrogatively over Jim’s shoulder.

“Your robe is dragging,” shrieked in shrill staccato Daisy Shaw; and there had been a dull nod of the head, a feeble pull at the dragging robe, then it had dragged again.

“Oh, don’t mind, dear,” said Alice Mendon.  “It is his own lookout if he loses the robe.”

“It isn’t that,” responded Daisy querulously.  “It isn’t that.  I don’t care, since he is so careless, if he does lose it, but I must say that I don’t think it is safe.  Suppose it got caught in the wheel, and I know this horse stumbles.”

“Don’t worry, dear,” said Alice Mendon.  “Fitzgerald’s robe always drags, and nothing ever happens.”

Alice Mendon was a young woman, not a young girl (she had left young girlhood behind several years since) and she was distinctly beautiful after a fashion that is not easily affected by the passing years.  She had had rather an eventful life, but not an event, pleasant or otherwise, had left its mark upon the smooth oval of her face.  There was not a side nor retrospective glance to disturb the serenity of her large blue eyes.  Although her eyes were blue, her hair was almost chestnut black, except in certain lights, when it gave out gleams as of dark gold.  Her features were full, her figure large, but not too large.  She wore a dark red tailored gown; and sumptuous sable furs shaded with dusky softness and shot, in the sun, with prismatic gleams, set off her handsome, not exactly smiling, but serenely beaming face.  Two great black ostrich plumes and one red one curled down toward the soft spikes of the fur.  Between, the two great blue eyes, the soft oval of the cheeks, and the pleasant red fullness of the lips appeared.