Adelle departed in the Glynn motor for the Glynn country-place, where she was to stay until the Glynns sailed for Europe. She was prettily dressed in ecru-colored embroidered linen, with a broad straw hat and suede gloves and boots, according to the style of the day, and she was really happy and almost aware of it. Eveline was glum because her mother--a stern-looking matron who knew exactly what she wanted out of life and how to get it--had refused peremptorily to let her invite Bobby Trenow to accompany them. Bobby was Eveline's darling of the hour, as Adelle knew: Eveline had let him kiss her for the first time the previous evening, and she was "perfectly crazy" about him. To Adelle, Bobby was merely a smooth, downy boy like all the rest, who showed bare brown arms and white flannels in summer, and had as little to say for himself as she had. She was amused at Nelly's fussed state over the loss of Bobby; she could not understand Mother Glynn's objection to the harmless Bobby's occupying the vacant seat in the roomy car;--but then she did not understand many things in the intricate social world in which she found herself. She did not know that there is no one of their possessions that the rich learn more quickly to guard than their women. The aristocrats of all ages have jealously housed and protected their women from entangling sexual relations, while permitting the greatest license to their predatory males. The reasons are obvious enough to the mature intelligence, but difficult for the young to comprehend. Adelle had not yet felt the need of a Bobby Trenow. XVI Some years ago Prince Ponitowski had built in Neuilly, near the gate of the Bois, what contemporary novelists described as a "nest" for his mistress--a famous Parisian lady. It was a fascinating little villa with a demure brick and stone facade, a terrace, and a few shady trees in a tiny, high-walled garden. The prince died, and the lady having made other arrangements, the smart little villa came into the hands of Miss Catherine Comstock, who took a long lease of the premises and established there her family of "select" American girls. It might seem that the tradition of the Villa Ponitowski (as the place continued to be called) was hardly suitable for her purposes, but the robust common sense of our age rarely hesitates over such intangible considerations, and least of all the sophisticated Miss Comstock. At the Villa Ponitowski the young women enjoyed the healthful freedom of a suburb with the open fields of the Bois directly at their door, and yet were within easy reach of Paris, "with its galleries and many cultural opportunities"--according to the familiar phrasing of Miss Comstock's letters to inquiring parents. (She had no circulars.)