To Jack’s friends he was much the same as usual.  He simply went on in his ante-marriage ways.  Perhaps he drank a little more, perhaps he was a little more reckless at cards, and it was certain that his taste for amusing himself in second-hand book-shops and antiquity collections had weakened.  His talked-of project for some regular occupation seemed to have been postponed, although he said to himself that it was only postponed until his speculations, which kept him in a perpetual fever, should put him in a position to command a business.

Meantime he did not neglect social life—­that is, the easy, tolerant company which lived as he liked to live.  There was at first some pretense of declining invitations which Edith could not accept, but he soon fell into the habit of a man whose family has temporarily gone abroad, with the privileges of a married man, without the responsibilities of a bachelor.  Edith could see that he took great credit to himself for any evenings he spent at home, and perhaps he had a sort of support in the idea that he was sacrificing himself to his family.  Major Fairfax, whom Edith distrusted as a misleader of youth, did not venture to interfere with Jack again, but he said to himself that it was a blank shame that with such a wife he should go dangling about with women like Carmen and Miss Tavish, not that the Major himself had any objection to their society, but, hang it all, that was no reason why Jack should be a fool.

In midwinter Jack went to Washington on business.  It was necessary to see Mavick, and Mr. Henderson, who was also there.  To spend a few weeks at the capital, in preparation for Lent, has become a part of the program of fashion.  There can be met people like-minded from all parts of the Union, and there is gayety, and the entertainment to be had in new acquaintances, without incurring any of the responsibilities of social continuance.  They meet there on neutral ground.  Half Jack’s set had gone over or were going.  Young Van Dam would go with him.  It will be only for a few days, Jack had said, gayly, when he bade Edith good-by, and she must be careful not to let the boy forget him.

It was quite by accident, apparently, that in the same train were the Chesneys, Miss Tavish, and Carmen going over to join her husband.  This gave the business expedition the air of an excursion.  And indeed at the hotel where they stayed this New York contingent made something of an impression, promising an addition to the gayety of the season, and contributing to the importance of the house as a centre of fashion.  Henderson’s least movements were always chronicled and speculated on, and for years he had been one of the stock subjects, out of which even the dullest interviewers, who watch the hotel registers in all parts of the country, felt sure that they could make an acceptable paragraph.  The arrival of his wife, therefore, was a newspaper event.