He recovered from the devastation of a fit of laughter and went on with his dissection of Mrs. Van Suydam. “She said to me ‘And which of these ladies and gentlemen are my son’s especial friends?’ This being soon after the marriage I was at a loss: for who among us knew much about him? Who among us, even now, knows much about him? We really agree with Mrs. Van Suydam, who didn’t then, and doesn’t now, recognize a possible bridge between her family and the artists who make the toys with which Van Suydams amuse themselves when so minded. You realize that she must have had some definite plans for her son--that she must have followed the best lines of the dowager tradition and picked out a wife for him? She wanted Gertrude Cuyler, who’s wholesomely without talents, to marry Nicholas. The Cuyler girl was the woman whose eventual stepping into her shoes she could have borne with equanimity. But I hear that his objection to Gertrude was that she insisted too strenuously on the fact of her never feeling ill; while, he is reported to have said, he didn’t admire sickly women, there was a happy mean between bouncing health and a lady’s delicately tenacious hold on life.” Gertrude Cuyler had never interested us. She laughed too much; and when she laughed her mouth, stretching widely, still failed to suggest true mirth. About this girl who had sighed, at the tea two years ago, there was no hint of mirth, although her frequent laughter showed her to be conscience-stricken by its absence. She was a tall girl with russet hair and the pale skin of the red-headed woman; and over her face there was the warmth of sunshine, and when one looked closely the sunshine was an overlay of small golden freckles. As Glidden had remarked, she was wholesome. “I mentioned her,” whispered Glidden, “because she happens to be sitting a few tables away.” Over the shoulder of the man with her, she eyed me. Before the day was over, I was to feel sorry for Gertrude Cuyler. But at the time I glowered because she was only a few tables away. “Women are so amazing. They know when they’re being talked about--with the exception of Eva,” he amended it. “Eva is sublimely oblivious--most of the time. It’s so lovely to watch a person who is sublimely oblivious.” Plaintively I begged that he make one plain statement of fact: how did Mrs. Van Suydam feel about her son having married Eva Litchfield?