They were all there: the American Consul’s wife, mild, plump and irreproachable; the lovely Mrs. Prentiss of San Francisco, who “took things” and had been involved in a drug scandal; the Comtesse de Sainte Maxime, who had been a Loach of Philadelphia, and had figured briefly on the operatic stage; the Consul’s sister, who dressed like a flapper, and had been engaged during the war to a series of American officers, all of whom seemed to have given her celluloid bangles; and a pale Mrs. Marsh, who used to be seen about with a tall tired man called “the Colonel”, whose family-name was not Marsh, but for whom she wore mourning when he died, explaining--somewhat belatedly--that he was a cousin. Lastly, there was Mrs. Fred Langly of Albany, whose husband was “wanted” at home for misappropriation of funds, and who, emerging from the long seclusion consequent on this unfortunate episode, had now blossomed into a “prominent war-worker”, while Mr. Langly devoted himself to the composition of patriotic poems, which he read (flanked by the civil and military authorities) at all the allied Inaugurations and Commemorations; so that by the close of the war he had become its recognized bard, and his “Lafayette, can we forget?” was quoted with tears by the very widows and orphans he had defrauded. Facing Mrs. Merriman sat the Rector, in clerical pepper-and-salt clothes and a secular pepper-and-salt moustache, talking cheerful slang in a pulpit voice. Mrs. Clephane looked about her with new eyes. Save for their hostess, the Consul’s wife and Mrs. Langly, “things” had been said of all the women; even concerning Mrs. Parley Plush, the older inhabitants (though they all went to her teas at the Villa Mimosa) smiled and hinted. And they all knew each other’s stories, or at least the current versions, and affected to disapprove of each other and yet be tolerant; thus following the example of Mrs. Merriman, who simply wouldn’t _listen_ to any of those horrors, and of Mr. Merriman, whose principle it was to “believe the best” till the worst stared him in the face, and then to say: “I understand it all happened a long while ago.”