Mrs. Fischer-Suympkins had been the first large plum that the Kinsolvings had drawn from the social pie.  For a long time, the pie itself had been out of reach on a top shelf.  But the purse and the pursuit had at last lowered it.  Mrs. Fischer-Suympkins was the heliograph of the smart society parading corps.  The glitter of her wit and actions passed along the line, transmitting whatever was latest and most daring in the game of peep-show.  Formerly, her fame and leadership had been secure enough not to need the support of such artifices as handing around live frogs for favours at a cotillon.  But, now, these things were necessary to the holding of her throne.  Beside, middle age had come to preside, incongruous, at her capers.  The sensational papers had cut her space from a page to two columns.  Her wit developed a sting; her manners became more rough and inconsiderate, as if she felt the royal necessity of establishing her autocracy by scorning the conventionalities that bound lesser potentates.

To some pressure at the command of the Kinsolvings, she had yielded so far as to honour their house by her presence, for an evening and night.  She had her revenge upon her hostess by relating, with grim enjoyment and sarcastic humour, her story of the vision carrying the hod.  To that lady, in raptures at having penetrated thus far toward the coveted inner circle, the result came as a crushing disappointment.  Everybody either sympathized or laughed, and there was little to choose between the two modes of expression.

But, later on, Mrs. Kinsolving’s hopes and spirits were revived by the capture of a second and greater prize.

Mrs. Bellamy Bellmore had accepted an invitation to visit at Clifftop, and would remain for three days.  Mrs. Bellmore was one of the younger matrons, whose beauty, descent, and wealth gave her a reserved seat in the holy of holies that required no strenuous bolstering.  She was generous enough thus to give Mrs. Kinsolving the accolade that was so poignantly desired; and, at the same time, she thought how much it would please Terence.  Perhaps it would end by solving him.

Terence was Mrs. Kinsolving’s son, aged twenty-nine, quite good-looking enough, and with two or three attractive and mysterious traits.  For one, he was very devoted to his mother, and that was sufficiently odd to deserve notice.  For others, he talked so little that it was irritating, and he seemed either very shy or very deep.  Terence interested Mrs. Bellmore, because she was not sure which it was.  She intended to study him a little longer, unless she forgot the matter.  If he was only shy, she would abandon him, for shyness is a bore.  If he was deep, she would also abandon him, for depth is precarious.

On the afternoon of the third day of her visit, Terence hunted up Mrs. Bellmore, and found her in a nook actually looking at an album.

“It’s so good of you,” said he, “to come down here and retrieve the day for us.  I suppose you have heard that Mrs. Fischer-Suympkins scuttled the ship before she left.  She knocked a whole plank out of the bottom with a hod.  My mother is grieving herself ill about it.  Can’t you manage to see a ghost for us while you are here, Mrs. Bellmore—­a bang-up, swell ghost, with a coronet on his head and a cheque book under his arm?”