The season opened with a bang on the first of December. The smart set could barely get six hours in bed from going to parties at all hours. This did not apply to Mrs. Luttrell, who, although she was out every night, did not disturb herself to appear in public until four o’clock in the afternoon. That particular form of barbaric entertainment known as a ladies’ luncheon had no charms for Mrs. Luttrell, because there were no men to be found at them; for this woman, who cherished with an idolatrous recollection the memory of the only man she had ever loved, and who had refused more offers of marriage than any other woman of her day, frankly admitted that she couldn’t enjoy anything without a masculine element in it. And men she contrived to have in plenty, with a success but little inferior to that of Ninon de l’Enclos. For that reason Richard Baskerville was not only the person Mrs. Luttrell loved best in the world, but was really her most intimate friend. There was nothing Mrs. Luttrell enjoyed so much as a midnight tête–à–tête over her bedroom fire with Baskerville, he just from his books and she just from her nightly gayety. Mrs. Luttrell scorned a boudoir,—or the modern version of it, a den. She had a huge, old–fashioned bedroom, with an ancient four–poster mahogany bed, with green silk curtains, and a lace valance; and everything in the room was big and square and handsome and comfortable, like the bed. There was a large fireplace, with shining brass fire–dogs and a monumental brass fender; and Mrs. Luttrell frequently admitted that when she got her feet on that fender and her dressing–gown on, she grew so communicative that she would tell the inmost secrets of her soul to the veriest stranger, if he had his feet on the fender at the same time. It was on a night early in January that Mrs. Luttrell nabbed Baskerville at her door, as she was being let in by the sleepy black butler. Baskerville followed her upstairs into her room, considerately turning his back while the old lady got out of her black–velvet gown, and whisked off her flannel petticoat, into her comfortable dressing–gown—an operation she performed without the least regard for his presence. Then, when her delicate, high–bred feet were on the fender before the glowing wood fire, she said:— “Now you can turn around—and I’m a great deal more clothed than the women you take down to dinner or dance with at balls.” “I don’t dance at a great many balls. Let me see—I haven’t danced for—“ “Oh, I know. Well, I’m just from a dinner at Secretary Slater’s, where that ridiculous little Mrs. Hill–Smith, his daughter, was in great feather, and also the Baldwin girl and Anne Clavering.” “You ought to beg Miss Clavering’s pardon for bracketing her with Mrs. Hill–Smith and Eleanor Baldwin.”