for intercourse lacked anything in the way of adequacy.  Suzette accorded her just that touch of patronage which a moderately well-off and immoderately dull girl will usually try to mete out to an acquaintance who is known to be wealthy and suspected of possessing brains.  In return Elaine armed herself with that particular brand of mock humility which can be so terribly disconcerting if properly wielded.  No quarrel of any description stood between them and one could not legitimately have described them as enemies, but they never disarmed in one another’s presence.  A misfortune of any magnitude falling on one of them would have been sincerely regretted by the other, but any minor discomfiture would have produced a feeling very much akin to satisfaction.  Human nature knows millions of these inconsequent little feuds, springing up and flourishing apart from any basis of racial, political, religious or economic causes, as a hint perhaps to crass unseeing altruists that enmity has its place and purpose in the world as well as benevolence.

Elaine had not personally congratulated Suzette since the formal announcement of her engagement to the young man with the dissentient tailoring effects.  The impulse to go and do so now, overmastered her sense of what was due to Comus in the way of explanation.  The letter was still in its blank unwritten stage, an unmarshalled sequence of sentences forming in her brain, when she ordered her car and made a hurried but well-thought-out change into her most sumptuously sober afternoon toilette.  Suzette, she felt tolerably sure, would still be in the costume that she had worn in the Park that morning, a costume that aimed at elaboration of detail, and was damned with overmuch success.

Suzette’s mother welcomed her unexpected visitor with obvious satisfaction.  Her daughter’s engagement, she explained, was not so brilliant from the social point of view as a girl of Suzette’s attractions and advantages might have legitimately aspired to, but Egbert was a thoroughly commendable and dependable young man, who would very probably win his way before long to membership of the County Council.

“From there, of course, the road would be open to him to higher things.”

“Yes,” said Elaine, “he might become an alderman.”

“Have you seen their photographs, taken together?” asked Mrs. Brankley, abandoning the subject of Egbert’s prospective career.

“No, do show me,” said Elaine, with a flattering show of interest; “I’ve never seen that sort of thing before.  It used to be the fashion once for engaged couples to be photographed together, didn’t it?”

“It’s very much the fashion now,” said Mrs. Brankley assertively, but some of the complacency had filtered out of her voice.  Suzette came into the room, wearing the dress that she had worn in the Park that morning.

“Of course, you’ve been hearing all about the engagement from mother,” she cried, and then set to work conscientiously to cover the same ground.