"One never knows undesirable people, my dear," Mrs. Staggchase responded, without the faintest shadow of the sarcastic intent which her guest yet secretly felt in her words. "Bless me!" broke in Elsie Dimmont, with characteristic explosiveness. "What an abandoned creature I must be! I am actually going to the Fenton's to dine to-night." "Mr. Fenton," Mrs. Bodewin Ranger responded, in her soft voice, "is a gentleman by birth, and his wife was a Caldwell; her mother was a Calvin, you know." Ethel Mott laughed. "And so he passes," she said, "in spite of his being an artist. How pleased he would be if he knew it." "It would be worth while to tell him," Mrs. Frostwinch interpolated, "just to hear his comments." "We owe Arthur Fenton more scores than we can ever settle," observed the hostess, "for the things he says about women. He said to me the other day that the society of lovely woman is always a delight except when a man was in earnest about something." "I said to him, one night," added Elsie Dimmont, "that Kate West wasn't in her first youth. 'Oh, no!' he said, 'her third or fourth at least.'" The others smiled, except Mrs. Ranger. "Poor Kate!" she said; "all you girls seem to dislike her somehow. Mrs. West was a somebody from Washington," she added, reflectively, as if she unconsciously sought in the girl's pedigree some explanation of her unpopularity. "Is it so dreadful to come from Washington?" asked Miss Merrivale; and then wondered if she ought to have said it. "It is not the coming from Washington," was Mrs. Frostwinch's reply, delivered in the same faintly satirical manner which she had maintained throughout the discussion; "it is the being merely a somebody instead of having a definite family name behind her." "It is all very well for you to make fun of my old-fashioned notions, Anna," Mrs. Ranger returned, good-naturedly. "You think just as I do." "I should be sorry not to think as you do about everything," was the answer. "And, to be perfectly honest, I can't help being a little ashamed that a cousin of mine has gone on to the stage. She was always dreadfully headstrong." "Has she talent?" asked Mrs. Staggchase. "Yes, she has talent; but is anything short of genius an excuse for taking to the boards?" "I wish I could act," put in Miss Dimmont, emphatically. "I'd go on to the stage in a minute." Mrs. Ranger looked shocked and grieved as well. "My dear," she said, "you can't realize what you are saying. The stage has always been a hotbed of immorality from the very beginning of theatrical art, and nothing can reform it." "Reform it," echoed Mrs. Staggchase, suavely; "we don't want to reform it. Nothing would so surely ruin the actor's art as the reformation of his morals." "Oh, my dear!" remonstrated Mrs. Ranger. "Really, Diana," Mrs. Frostwinch said, good-naturedly, "your sentiments are too shocking for belief." "But she doesn't mean them," added Mrs. Ranger.