She knew about Ralph Ramsay only what her stepson had told her in his letters from France during the past two years. In these letters Ralph Ramsay had been described as a “wonder, a corker, a dare-devil in the air, a chap who defied danger and death, a little bit of all right,” and when Jack took the trouble to detail some thrilling event or to tell of fine achievements, Ralph Ramsay would turn out to be the man who had done the thing. In Jack’s letters the ace had charmed this imaginative and loveless woman, and his valor and his courage had fascinated her from afar. In her room, on her bureau and on her desk, were numerous snapshots of the two young men, and the ace seemed always to be smiling at her and to be the expression of _la joie de vivre_. He attracted her enormously, and in the little pictures she grew to know every line of his slim body and of his beautiful head. As he waved his cap at the side of a broken machine from which he had landed that time safely, he seemed to wave to her and to greet her. When her husband came into her little room, if he resented the fact that there were no pictures of himself there and too many of his scapegrace of a son, his good breeding did not allow him to comment on the fact! He showed a friendly approval of Captain Ramsay, however. “Now there is a fine-looking chap, Nell, and I hope to God he does Jack good. I’d like a son like that!” But he saw the flying man under different colors when Ramsay appeared at Waybrook. Ramsay came into a conventional atmosphere with a vivid charm of which no one was unconscious, and if Jack had written that from the mascot to the colonel he was popular in France--he was popular at Waybrook, from the chauffeur by whose side he had sat on the way from the train, to the lady of the house. Not even the big wedding with the rush, excitement, and absorption had been able to cloud over the brightness of the passing of Ralph Ramsay. If he defied danger in the air, the young man defied convention here; and with utter disregard of propriety he fell in love with the lady of the house and took no pains to conceal his passion. Mrs. Hereford remembered what her stepson had said of him: “Women go crazy about Ralph. In the hospital he had the nurses nailed. It was comic, the poor chaps on either side of him stood no chance at all!” Tommy Hereford, the best host on Long Island, had on this occasion displayed a perfect hospitality! For ten days he watched this young man make love to his wife and did not throw him out! Hereford sincerely loved his wife, and was determined to win her if he could. He had no intention of playing the losing game of a jealous husband.