Seated, perhaps, in the elaborate marble and deep red of the Boscombe's reception-rooms, isolated in the brilliant expensive throng, she would speculate over what passed in the light of her own special problems. But nothing, really, came out to her satisfaction. There was, notably, no one she might ask. Her mother, approached seriously, declared that Linda gave her the creeps; while others made it plain that it was their duty to repress the forwardness inevitable from the scandalous neglect of her upbringing. They, the women of the Boscombe, glancing at their finger-nails stained and buffed to a shining pale vermilion, lightly rubbing their rings on the dry palm of a hand, wondered pessimistically within Linda's hearing what could come out of such an association. That term, she vaguely gathered, referred to her mother. The latter evidently interested them tremendously; because, she explained, they had no affairs of their own to attend to. This was perfectly clear to Linda until Mrs. Condon further characterized them as “busy.” The women, stopped by conventions from really satisfactory investigation at the source, drew her on occasion into a laboriously light inquisition. How long would Linda and her mama stay at the Boscombe? Had they closed their apartment? Where was it? Hadn't Mrs. Condon mentioned Cleveland? Wasn't Linda lonely with her mama out so much--they even said late--in rolling chairs? Had she ever seen Mr. Jasper before his arrival last week? No, of course she hadn't. Here they exchanged skeptical glances beneath relentlessly pulled eyebrows. He was really very nice, Mr. Jasper. Linda in a matter-of-fact voice replied that he had given her a twenty-dollar gold piece. Mr. Jasper was very generous. But perhaps he had rewarded her for being a good little girl and not--not bothering or hanging about. “Why should he?” was Linda's just perceptibly impatient response. Then they told her to be quiet because they wanted to listen to the music. This consisted in studying, through suspended glasses in chased platinum, a discreet programme. At the end of a selection they either applauded condescendingly or told each other that they hadn't cared for that last--really too peculiar. Whichever happened, the leader of the small orchestra, an extravagant Italian with a supple waist, turned and bowed repeatedly with a grimacing smile. The music, usually Viennese, was muted and emotional; its strains blended perfectly with the floating scents of the women and the faintly perceptible pungent odors of dinner. Every little while a specially insinuating melody became, apparently, tangled in the women's breathing, and their breasts, cunningly traced and caressed in tulle, would be disturbed.