“I couldn’t take her to the type of restaurants I am forced to dine in occasionally,” he added in justification. On the whole, his testimony did her no harm. If he did not cut a swagger figure, it was the opinion of jury and spectators that entertaining Mrs. Breese was Mr. Breese’s task, and in this the husband had obviously been negligent. The two Breese children, Henry Jr. and the Countess Giering-Trelovitch, testified for their mother. Henry Jr. was twenty and the Countess twenty-five. Henry Jr. swallowed visibly as counsel wrenched from him incidents of bad temper and cruelty of which his father had been guilty. Mrs. Breese cried, rather effectively, while he was on the stand. His father covered his eyes with his hand. Then the Countess, rather pale, rather bored, and yet curiously lovely, added the necessary confirmation. She seemed a slim edition of her mother, without her mother’s enormous energy. But undoubtedly the star witness was Gordon Rice, wealthy promoter, traveler, and one-time soldier of fortune. Rice was fifty, a few years older than Breese Sr., white-haired, red-faced, and with a downright heartiness of manner that soon won the jury. His was obviously a painful duty, and you felt that the quicker it was over with the better he would like it. He told of the sordid affair of the Follies beauty; how he had warned the elder Breese that it would wreck his marriage. He told of certain episodes that the law demands, and nothing could shake his testimony in the cross-examination. Then the trial was over, and the verdict was read with great solemnity. After which it was appealed, and appealed again. And then the elder Breese, who refused to take the stand, denied himself to all interviewers, sulked in his hotel suite and instructed the lawyers to settle. They did. And the newspapers, even the tabloids, dropped Mrs. Breese as quickly as they had picked her up. I had been keeping in touch with her after the trial, for news agencies must continue reporting even the most trivial items long after the newspapers have sent their reporters to greener fields. It was because of this that I was able to observe how unhappy Mrs. Breese had become as interest in her problems waned. Where once the color of a new gown was well-nigh sufficient to warrant a re-make of an edition, her spiciest pronunciamentos now found the waste-basket. Her lawyers advised her to go to Europe and rest. But Mrs. Breese did not want to rest. The dramatic excitement of the trial had only whetted her appetite for the public eye.