Mrs. Magnelius Grandcourt, glittering like a South American scarab, detained her with the smallest and chubbiest hands she had ever seen inside of gloves.

“My dear, you look ghastly,” said her hostess.  “You’re probably scared to death.  This is my son, Delancy, who is going to take you in, and I’m wondering about you, because Delancy doesn’t get on with debutantes, but that can’t be helped.  If he’s pig enough not to talk to you, it wouldn’t surprise me—­and it’s just as well, too, for if he likes anybody he compromises them, but it’s no use your ever liking a Grandcourt, for all the men make rotten husbands—­I’m glad Rosalie Dysart threw him over for poor Jack Dysart; it saved her a divorce!  I’d get one if I could; so would Magnelius.  My husband was a judge once, but he resigned because he couldn’t send people up for the things he was doing himself.”

Mrs. Grandcourt, still gabbling away, turned to greet new arrivals, merely switching to another subject without interrupting her steady stream of outrageous talk.  She was celebrated for it—­and for nothing else.

Geraldine, bewildered and a little horrified, looked at her billowy, bediamonded hostess, then at young Delancy Grandcourt, who, not perceptibly abashed by his mother’s left-handed compliments, lounged beside her, apparently on the verge of a yawn.

“My mother says things,” he explained patiently; “nobody minds ’em....  Shall we exchange nonsense—­or would you rather save yourself until dinner?”

“Save myself what?” she asked nervously.

“The nuisance of talking to me about nothing.  I’m not clever.”

Geraldine reddened.

“I don’t usually talk about nothing.”

“I do,” he said.  “I never have much to say.”

“Is that because you don’t like debutantes?” she asked coldly.

“It’s because they don’t care about me....  If you would talk to me, I’d really be grateful.”

He flushed and stepped back awkwardly to allow room for a slim, handsome man to pass between them.  The very ornamental man did not pass, however, but calmly turned toward Geraldine, and began to talk to her.

She presently discovered his name to be Dysart; and she also discovered that Mr. Dysart didn’t know her name; and, for a moment after she had told him, surprise and a confused sense of resentment silenced her, because she was quite certain now that they had never been properly presented.

That negligence of conventions was not unusual in this new world she was entering, she had already noticed; and this incident was evidently another example of custom smilingly ignored.  She looked up questioningly, and Dysart, instantly divining the trouble, laughed in his easy, attractive fashion—­the fashion he usually affected with women.

“You seemed so fresh and cool and sweet all alone in this hot corner that I simply couldn’t help coming over to hear whether your voice matched the ensemble.  And it surpasses it.  Are you going to be resentful?”