He and Frances hated each other. She stared at him with cold contempt, he looked her up and down insolently; they never spoke unless it couldn’t be avoided. Unfortunately Frances had to listen to a great deal about him from Miss Eppendorfer, how successful and brilliant he was in business, how supremely well-educated, how fastidious and aristocratic, how irresistible to the fair sex. He told her about his “affairs” and she insisted upon telling Frankie, although the latter said bluntly enough that she wasn’t interested. It was necessary that she should be shown what a remarkable conquest Miss Eppendorfer had made. She was forced to hear about the Russian princess, the awfully exclusive Parisienne, and above all about the eminent and very chic Damen in Wien. The colossal success he had had! Frances had either to consider him a liar, or the ladies on the continent of Europe as pitifully lacking in taste. He very soon began coming to dinner every night, and Miss Eppendorfer went to great trouble to secure a cook who was not only a German, but a German from the only correct part of Germany for cooks to inhabit. She extorted big wages and made life wretched with her shrewishness, but her delicacies were supposed to atone for all this. Expenses mounted steadily; Frances had not imagined that Miss Eppendorfer had so much money. She bought new clothes continually, and flowers, and very expensive wines. Mr. Hassler was not absent for a single night for two months after the coming of the German cook, but not once did he invite his cousin to go anywhere with him, or did he bring her flowers or sweets. Frances could not comprehend this thing; she thought she did, but she didn’t, in the least. It was the sort of affair not related in romantic novels; there was nothing romantic about it. It might be classified as a “love affair,” although it would have been confoundedly hard to find any love in it.... Frankie simply thought that Miss Eppendorfer was “silly” about the young man, and anxious to impress him, and that he was attracted by the good dinners. Her first real suspicions awoke when she was checking up the stubs in the authoress’s cheque book, which she did every month when the vouchers came back from the bank. And she saw, no less than five times, cheques made out to “Kurt Hassler” for fifty dollars, sixty dollars, up to a hundred. It gave her a vague feeling of uneasiness, which she couldn’t shake off, although she assured herself that it was all “business.” Then she and Miss Eppendorfer had the first of their quarrels. The cook wanted a day off, and Miss Eppendorfer gaily asked Frankie if she wouldn’t cook one of her dear little suppers for “Kurtie.” Frances flushed. “Why don’t you go to a restaurant?” she suggested. “Kurtie’s so sick of restaurants. I told him what heavenly things you used to fix up for me, and he said he’d like to see what you could do. He’s----” “I’m sorry,” said Frances, “but I’d rather not.”