“Gracious me!” said Mrs. Toland, in a low undertone full of annoyance.  “Did any one ever hear such nonsense!  All that is past history now, Janey,” she reminded her young daughter, in her usual hopeful voice.  “Dad sent a cheque, like the dear, helpful daddy he is, and now everything’s lovely again!”

Julia did not ask for Ted until she saw Barbara alone for a moment the next day.  It was about ten o’clock on a matchless autumn morning, and Julia, stepping from her bedroom’s French window to the wide sunny porch that ran the width of the house, saw Barbara some forty feet away sitting just outside her own window, with a mass of hair spread to the sun.

Julia joined her, dragged out a low, light chair from Barbara’s room, and settled herself for a gossip.

“Had breakfast?” Barbara smiled.  “Jim downstairs?”

“Oh, hours ago!” Julia said to the first question, and to the second, with the young wife’s conscious blush, “Jim’s dressing.  He’s the most impossible person to get started in the morning!”

Barbara did not blush but she felt a little tug at her heart.

“Come,” she said, “I thought Jim had no faults?”

“Well, he hasn’t,” Julia laughed.  And then, a little confused by her own fervent tone, she changed the subject, and asked about Ted.

“Why, Ted’s happy, and rich, and simply adored by Bob Carleton,” Barbara summarized briefly, in a rather dry voice, “but Mother and Dad never will get over it, and I suppose Ted herself doesn’t like the idea of that other wife—­she lives at The Palace, and she’s got a seven-year-old girl!  It’s done, you know, Julie, and of course Ted’s accepted everywhere; she’ll go to the Brownings’ this year, and Mrs. Morton has asked her to receive with her at some sort of dinner reception next month, you’ll meet her everywhere.  But I do think it’s terribly hard on Mother and Dad!”

“But how could she, that great big black creature?”

“Oh, she loves him fast enough!  It was perfectly legal, of course.  I think Dad was at the wedding, and I think Richie was, but we girls never knew anything until it was all over.  Mother simply announced to us one night that Ted was married, and that there was to be no open break, but that she and Dad were just about sick!  I never saw Mother give way so!  She said—­and it’s true—­that if ever there was a mother who deserved her children’s confidence, and so on!  All the newspapers blazed about it—­Ted’s picture, Bob’s picture—­and, as I say, society welcomed her with open arms.  They’ve got a gorgeous suite at the St. Francis, and Ted really looks stunning, and acts as if she’d done something very smart.  Con says that when she called, it reminded her of the second act of a bad play.  Ted came here with Bob, one Saturday afternoon, but Mother hasn’t been near her!”

“It seems too bad,” Julia said thoughtfully, “when your father and mother are always so sweet!”