About five-thirty the door opened to admit a little group, at the sight of whom Nan uttered a short, hysterical chuckle. Then she glided to meet them, both hands outstretched in welcome, Mrs. Sherwood watched her with admiration. Nan was game. There were three in the party: Mrs. Morrell, Sally Warner, and Mrs. Scattergood. Sally Warner was of the gushing type of tall, rather desiccated femininity who always knows you so much better than you know her, who cultivates you every moment for a week and forgets you for months on end, who is hard up and worldly and therefore calculating, whose job is to amuse people and who will therefore sacrifice her best, perhaps not most useful, friend to an epigram, whose wit is barbed, who has a fine nose for trouble, and who is always in at the death. Mrs. Scattergood was a small blond woman, high voiced, precise in manner, very positive in her statements which she delivered in a drawling tone, humourless, inquisitive about petty affairs, the sort of "good woman" with whom no fault can be found, but who drives men to crime. Mrs. Morrell we know. These three, after greeting their hostess gushingly, circulated compactly, talking to each other in low voices. Nan knew they were watching her, and that they had come for the sole purpose of getting first-hand details of her fiasco for later recounting in drawing-rooms where, undoubtedly, even now awaited eager auditors. She came to a decision. The matter could not be worse. When, the three came to make their farewells, she detained them. "No, I'm not going to let you go yet," she told them, perhaps a little imperiously. "I haven't had half a visit with you. Wait until this rabble clears out." She hesitated a moment over Mrs. Sherwood, but finally let her go without protest. When the last guest had departed she sank into a chair. As she was already on the verge of hysterics, she easily kept up an air of gayety. "Girls, what an awful party!" she cried. "I could tear my hair! It was a perfect nightmare." Struggling to control her voice and keep back her tears, she added abruptly: "Now tell me what it is all about." Mrs. Morrell and Sally Warner were plainly uneasy and at a loss how to meet this situation, but Mrs. Scattergood remained quite composed in her small, compact way. "What's what all about, Nan, dear?" asked Sally Warner in her most vivacious manner. She keenly felt the dramatic situation and was already visualizing herself in the role of raconteuse. "You know perfectly well. Why this funeral? Where are they all? Why did they stay away? I have a right to know." "I'm sure there's nothing _I_ can think of!" replied Sally artificially. "The idea!" But Mrs. Scattergood, with all the relish of performing a noble and disagreeable duty, broke in: "You know, dear," she said in her didactic, slow voice, "as well as we do, what the world is. Of course _we_ understand, but people will talk!"