Mr. Willoughby coughed deprecatingly and avoided the eye of his wife, a woman with an appallingly firm chin who sat opposite him. She now spoke sharply. “It’s Jacob’s ridiculous lack of backbone that’s to blame for all this foolish extravagance,” she declared. “Why did he consent in the first place to Jane’s furnishing that expensive flat? Why did he get us to agree to divide the expense of her clothes among us, and make us the victim of her spendthrift habits? For what she calls _lingerie_”--Mrs. Jacob Willoughby pronounced the French word with ineffable scorn, as though it suggested a multitude of moral lapses--“she has run up a bill of---- What’s the amount, Jacob?” Her husband, who was beginning to look crushed, searched with pathetic haste through the white drift of papers, selected another slip and readjusted his _pince-nez_. Suddenly a wave of red swept over his distressed features. “Well?” queried his wife, sharply. “She’s--she’s itemized it!” murmured the unresourceful Jacob, faintly. Thomas Willoughby, bachelor, who was a trifle hard of hearing, but whose other faculties were very sharp, leaned forward and put his hand behind his ear. “What say?” he demanded, querulously. “Speak up louder, man, can’t you?” Thomas, who was sixty, regretted his affliction chiefly because it so frequently prevented his hearing the recital of some fresh deviltry of Jane’s. Mrs. Jacob now interposed. “The total’s on the other side,” she said, eying her husband suspiciously, and, with a guilty air, he hastily reversed the paper. “The amount is eight hundred and seventeen dollars and sixteen cents,” he informed his auditors, lifelessly. “And just for one season,” supplemented Mrs. Willoughby. “It’s more than I spend--it’s more, I’m sure, than any of us spend”--she surveyed the Willoughby connection virtuously--“in five years.” “Oh, well,” gurgled the youngest and most attractive of the Willoughbys that were present, a placid, fair-haired woman, to whom any account of Jane and her doings always read like a page out of a thrilling novel, “she’s only twenty-four, you know, and it costs more to live in New York than in the country.” The lady sighed. Her country home was luxurious, but in her soul she longed for the flesh pots represented by a New York season. Her husband, however, devoted to his Alderney cows, his Berkshire hogs and his fancy fowls, put his foot down firmly whenever the subject of a town house, or even a brief month at one of the quieter hotels, was mentioned. “Of course it costs more to live in New York,” snapped Miss Willoughby, “and I’ve contended all along that Jane has no business keeping up that flat in town. In the first place, ’tisn’t proper. A young woman with her flighty ideas and without a chaperon or any female relation to give her countenance! Mark my words”--with acrid emphasis--“Jane will yet trail the Willoughby name in the dust.”