"I think it was very nasty of her, myself," laughed the Southerner; "but did it never occur to you that some other friend of yours might have been making mischief? You were a very desirable chum, some one might have filled your friend's head with notions of how different were your classes and walks in life; and how you were too loyal and kind hearted to desert or repel an old friend, but you might find such ties a drag on you. If that happened she would be a little morbid about making advances. She was probably proud in her own way." "There was Elsa Clarke," Mrs. Clymer suggested; "she was always trying to be intimate with you; and if ever there was a sly little climber, it was she." "Wait a minute!" exclaimed the hostess. "I am beginning to reminisce, myself. Wasn't there a boy in the Marsh family, Nannie Marsh's brother or cousin? Yes, her cousin, Oscar. Why, to be sure. He came back from college and was a clerk in Norris Blanchard's store, and fell madly in love with Gladys Blanchard. She treated him abominably, they did say. Led him on, and then married that young man from Massachusetts; and Oscar shot himself in the front yard while they were standing up under the floral bell." "How ghastly," murmured the youngest member, "to kill himself--" "Oh, it didn't kill him, though they thought he would die. I don't know but his uncle wondered sometimes if it wouldn't have been better. For after he got up he took to drink and notions--wild, anarchistic, socialistic--" "He couldn't take to them both at the same time," Mrs. Waite interrupted with fervor. "They are absolutely antagonistic, socialism--" "Yes, yes, to be sure"--the hostess hastily turned a conversational switch before the collision--"of course I didn't mean to say he believed in _both_, only that he took to making fierce speeches at the populist meetings, and wrote articles for the papers, girding at the rich. And he used to get drunk. The poor Marshes felt awfully. I shouldn't be a bit surprised if that was what made Nannie a little shy and stiff. Did she tell you about Oscar's tragedy?"