Into this final varnishing bath our heroine was plunged with her three friends, in the autumn of 1902, when she was eighteen years old. The girls arrived at the Villa from a motoring trip across Europe, during which they had scurried over the surface of five countries and put up in thirty-eight different hotels as the labels on their bags triumphantly proclaimed. Miss Comstock received the party in her own little salon in the rear of the Villa, where, after the elder Glynns had withdrawn, liqueurs and cigarettes were served. Miss Comstock lit a cigarette, perched her well-shod feet on a stool, and listened with sympathetic amusement to the adventures of the trio as vivaciously related by Eveline Glynn. The California sisters, it developed, had the cigarette habit, too, and Eveline tried one of "Pussy's" special kind. When the girls went to their rooms, to which they were conducted by Miss Comstock with an arm around the waist of Adelle and another about Irene Paul, the girls agreed that "Pussy" was "all right" and congratulated themselves upon the perspicacity of their choice. At Herndon Hall there had been at least the pretense of discipline and study, but all such childish notions were laughed at in the Villa Ponitowski. Eveline Glynn thought she had a voice and a teacher was engaged for her. Irene Paul devoted herself to the art of whistling, while her sister "went in for posters." Another girl was supposed to be studying painting and resorted a few afternoons each week to a studio, well chaperoned. Miss Comstock promised to find something for Adelle to do in an art way. But there was nothing pedantic or professional about the Villa Ponitowski. Miss Comstock prided herself upon her outlook. She knew that her girls would marry in all likelihood, and she endeavored to give them something of the horizon of broad boulevards and watering-places as a preparation. All the girls had their own maids, who brought them the morning cup of coffee whenever they rang--usually not before noon. The European day, Adelle learned, began about one o'clock with a variety of expeditions and errands, and frequently ended well after midnight at opera or play, or dancing party at the home of some American resident to whom Miss Comstock introduced her charges. This was during the season. Then there were, of course, expeditions to Rome and Vienna and Madrid, tours of cathedral towns, inspection of watering-places, etc.