"Mrs. Oglethorpe, I happen to know, as I dined there last night, was never better and is delighted with the idea that Jim has taken Janet abroad to get her away from that rotten crowd." She looked nonplussed, but returned to the charge. "How stories do get about! They even say that he horsewhipped you----" "Pray don't overtax your powers of invention. You know there's no such story going about or everybody here would have cut me dead. Try another tack." "Well, I'll confess I made that up just to get a rise out of you." She looked at him speculatively. "But about Janet--well, you see, I know you for a gay deceiver--mother is always using those old expressions that were the fashion in her--and Mary Ogden's--day. I hear you even made love to our fair hostess until you found out the truth and then you dropped her like a hot potato--or a cold fish. I was surprised when she told me you were coming here tonight, and asked her at once to seat us three together so that Anne and I could save you from feeling embarrassed--not that I told her that, of course. I merely said we were such old friends we would naturally have a thousand things to talk about. She didn't turn a hair; I'll say that much for her. But perhaps she thinks she's playing you on a long string. She's playing several poor fish who are here tonight." Should he tell her? He really could stand no more. He hadn't a doubt that the same rumor that had driven Janet to her crude attempt, to compromise him and then blast her rival with naked words, had reached these two older and cleverer, but hardly subtler girls, and they had joined forces to disenchant him and make him feel the misguided young man they no doubt believed him to be. He hated them both. They had that for their pains. He'd never willingly see one of them again. He longed to blurt out the truth. But his was not the right. He glanced over at Madame Zattiany, who sat in the middle of the table's length, receiving the intent homage of the men on either side of her and looking more placid than any other woman in the room. . . . It occurred to him that the rest were animated to excess, even the wives of those two men, to whom, it was patent, they were non-existent. He would have given his play at that moment to be able to stand up and ask the company to drink his health and hers.