The room into which I was conducted was empty when I entered it--a typical hotel-suite drawing-room, furnished with elaborate and very puffy looking stuffed furniture. I chose the only straight chair in the room, and sat down and waited again. I had met Mrs. Sewall only once in my life, quite formally at a party of some sort at Edith's. We may have exchanged a half dozen words, not more. I had never been invited to her grand house, and most of my knowledge of the lady had come through hearsay, and the social columns in the papers. It was necessary to keep my mind pretty closely fastened on the cigarette spectacle, or else I might have lost courage, and quietly withdrawn before Mrs. Sewall appeared. She kept me waiting in torture for at least fifteen minutes (I can tell you the subject of every one of the engravings on the wall, I am sure) but the queer thing is, that when she finally joined me and I rose to speak, I forgot to be afraid. Will says that such an experience is very common with him in making an after-dinner speech. "You don't know me, Mrs. Sewall," I began. "I fear I do not," she replied, smiling formally. She was dressed very plainly, but elegantly too. Her iron-grey hair looked as if it were cut out of marble not a wisp astray; and you simply felt, so perfect was everything about her, that the nail of her little finger was as nicely pointed, polished, and pinked as all the rest. "But your card," she went on, "your name sounds familiar." Of course it did--she probably had seen it signed after Will's articles in the magazines, I thought--but I replied simply, "You met me before I was Mrs. William Ford Maynard--in Hilton--several years ago. My name was Lucy Vars." I was quite prepared for the expression of hostility that crossed Mrs. Sewall's face at this remark. "Vars," she repeated a little vaguely. "Oh, yes, I remember. There was, I believe, a Ruth Vars. Are you related?" Then as if she had forgotten it up to this time, she suddenly asked, "Won't you sit down?" I thanked her and did so, she herself sinking into a voluminous tufted armchair opposite. "I am Ruth Vars' sister," I explained, "and it is about Ruth and your son that I have come to talk with you." Mrs. Sewall raised her brows. "Your sister? My son? Really? How extraordinary!" "Why, yes. You must know," I went on, "that your son is seeing a great deal of Ruth lately." Mrs. Sewall smiled in a very patronising manner and replied, "It is very difficult for a mother to keep track of all a young man's fancies." "This is more than a fancy, Mrs. Sewall. Ruth and your son are engaged to be married," I announced calmly. A slight flush spread over Mrs. Sewall's face to the very roots of her marcel wave, but her voice showed no emotion when she spoke. "Would it not have been more delicate to have allowed my son to have told me this piece of news," she asked me cuttingly. "I was not thinking much about the delicacy of my call, I'm afraid." "Evidently," she agreed.