"Oh, yes," she said, replying to their unasked questions, "Mrs. Leeds will be there--and I plainly see _my_ miserable fate. But what can a wretched woman expect from the Irish? Not constancy. Strelsa, take warning. They loved me once!" * * * * * After Westguard had put them in their limousine, he came back to find Quarren in his sitting-room, wearing a dressing-gown, and Lacy madly detailing to him the charms of Strelsa Leeds: "Take it from me, Dicky, she's some queen! You didn't miss a thing but the prettiest woman in town! And there's a _something_ about her--a kind of a sort of a something----" "You appear to be in love, dear friend," observed Quarren kindly. "I am. So's every man here who met her. We don't deny it! We glory in our fall! What was that costume of hers, Karl? Mourning?" "Fancy a glorious creature like her wearin' black for that nasty little cad," observed O'Hara disgustedly. "It's probably fashion, not grief," remarked Westguard. "I guess it's nix for the weeps," said O'Hara--"after all she probably went through with Reggie Leeds, I fancy she had no tears left over." "I want to talk," cried Lacy; "I want to tell Rix what he missed. I'd got as far as her gown, I think----" "Go on," smiled Quarren. "Anyway," said Lacy, "she wore a sort of mourning as far as her veil went, and her furs and gown and gloves were black, and her purse was gun-metal and black opals--rather brisk? Yes?--And all the dingles on her were gun-metal--everything black and sober--and that ruddy gold head--and--those eyes!--a kind of a purple-gray, Ricky, slanting a little, with long black lashes--I noticed 'em--and her lips were very vivid--not paint, but a kind of noticeably healthy scarlet--and that straight nose--and the fresh fragrant youth of her----" "For Heaven's sake, Jack----" "Sure. I'm through with 'em all. I'm wise to the sex. That was merely a word picture. I'm talking like a writer, that's all. That's how you boobs talk, isn't it, Karl?" "Always," said Westguard gravely. "Me for Mrs. Leeds," remarked O'Hara frankly. "I'd ask her to marry me on the drop of a hat." "Well, I'll drop no hat for _you_!" said Lacy. "And there'll be plenty of lunatics in this town who'll go madder than you or me before they forget Mrs. Leeds. Wait! Town is going to sit up and take notice when this new planet swims into its social ken. How's that epigram, Karl?" Westguard said thoughtfully: "There'll be notoriety, too, I'm afraid. If nobody knows her everybody knows about that wretched boy she married." Quarren added: "I have always understood that the girl did not want to marry him. It was her mother's doings." O'Hara scowled. "I also have heard that the mother engineered it.... What was Mrs. Leeds's name? I forget----" "Strelsa Lanark," said Quarren who never forgot anything.