Like all women who have ceased having birthdays Aunt Belle had not ceased struggling. She still had hopes of a financier who would carry her off in a storm of warmed-over romance to a castle in Kansas. Her first husband was Thomas Todd, the carpenter, chiefly distinguished for falling off a three-story building on which he was working and never harming a hair of his head; also for singing first bass in the village quartet. Aunt Belle had slightly recoloured her past since she had lived with her brother. The account of Mr. Todd's singing in the quartet was made to resemble a brilliant debut in grand opera which was abandoned because of Aunt Belle's dislike of stage life and its temptations, while his rolling off the three-story building was never alluded to except when Mark Constantine wished to tease. She was a short, plump person with permanently jet-black hair and twinkling eyes. Prepared to forgo all else save elegance, she had brought up her gorgeous niece with the idea that it was never possible to have too much luxury. Seated in the Gorgeous Girl's dressing room she now presented excellent proof that the world was growing very old indeed, for her plump self was squeezed into a short purple affair made like a pinafore, her high-heeled bronze slippers causing her to totter like a mandarin's wife; and strings of coral beads and a gold lorgnette rose and fell with rhythmic motion as she sighed very properly over her niece's marriage. "It will never be the same, darling," she was saying, glancing in a mirror to see if the light showed the rouge boundaries too clearly--"never quite the same. You'll understand when your daughter marries--for you have been just as dear as one." Beatrice, who was busy inspecting some newly arrived lingerie, did not glance up as she answered: "Don't be silly. You know it's a relief. You can sit back and rest from now on--until I'm divorced," she added with a smile. "How can you even say such a thing?" Beatrice tossed the filmy creamy silk somethings or other away and delivered herself of her mind. "Alice Twill was divorced before she married this specimen; so was Coralie Minter; and Harold Atwater; and both the Deralto girls were divorced, and their mother, too. And Jill Briggs is considering it, and I'm sure I don't blame her. Everyone seems to think a divorce quite the proper caper when things grow dull. You may as well have all the fun you can. Steve wants me to have everything I fancy, and I'm sure he'd never deny me a divorce." "You are marrying a splendid, self-made young man who adores you and who is making money every day in the week. No girl is to be more envied--you have had a wonderful ten years of being a 'Gorgeous Girl,' as your dear papa calls it, and at twenty-six you are to become the bride of a wonderful man--neither too early nor too late an age. I cannot really grieve--when I realize how happy you are going to be, and yet----"