“Well, why does she stand it?” said Mrs. Barker Emory, a handsome but somewhat hard-faced woman, with a manner curiously compounded of eagerness and uncertainty.

“Y’know, that’s what I’ve been wondering,” an Englishman added interestedly.

“Why, what else would she do?” Miss Vanderwall asked briskly.

“Rachael’s a perfectly adorable and brilliant and delightful creature,” summarized Peter Pomeroy, “but she’s not got a penny nor a relative in the world that I’ve ever heard of!  She’s got no grounds for divorcing Clarence, and if she simply wanted to get out, why, now that she’s brought Billy up, introduced her generally, whipped the girl into some sort of shape and got her the right sort of friends, I suppose she might get out and welcome!”

“No, Billy honestly likes her,” objected Vivian Sartoris.

“She doesn’t care for her enough to see that there’s fair play,” Elinor Vanderwall said quickly.

“Why doesn’t she take a leaf from Paula’s book,” somebody suggested, “and marry again?  She could go out West and get a divorce on any grounds she might choose to name.”

“Well, Rachael’s a cold woman, and a hard woman—­in a way,” Miss Vanderwall said musingly, after a pause, when the troubles of the Breckenridges kept the group silent for a moment.  “But she’s a good sport.  She gets a home, and clothes, and the club, and a car and all the rest out of it, and she knows Billy and Clarence do need her, in a way, to run things, and to keep up the social end.  More than that, Clarence can’t keep up this pace long—­he’s going to pieces fast—­and Billy may marry any day—­”

“I understand Joe Pickering’s a little bit touched in that quarter,” said Mrs. Torrence.

“Yes—­well, Clarence will never stand for that,” somebody said.

Little Miss Sartoris neglected the Torrence grandson long enough to say decidedly: 

“She wouldn’t look at Joe Pickering!  Joe drinks, and Billy’s had enough of that with her father.  Besides, he has no money of his own!  He’s impossible!”

“Where’s the mother all this time?” asked the Englishman.  “I mean to say, she’s living, isn’t she, and all that?”

“Very much alive,” Miss Vanderwall said.  “Married to an Italian count—­Countess Luca d’ Asafo.  His people have cut him off; they’re Catholics.  She has two little girls; there’s an uncle who’s obliged to leave property to a son, and it serves Paula quite right, I think.  Where they live, or what on, I haven’t the remotest idea.  I saw her in a car on Fifth Avenue, not so long ago, with two heavy little black-haired girls; she looked sixty.”

“Her sister, you know, was thick with my niece, Barbara Olliphant,” said Peter Pomeroy.  “And funny thing!—­when Barbara was married...”

It was a long story, and fortunately moved away from the previous topic; so that when it was presently interrupted by the arrival of two women, everybody in the group had cause to feel gratitude for a merciful deliverance.