And after they had tea at the redoubtable Mrs. Sprowl's, where there were more footmen than guests, more magnificence than comfort, and more wickedness in the gossip than lemon in the tea or Irish in the more popular high-ball. The old lady, fat, pink, enormous, looked about her out of her little glittering green eyes with a pleased conviction that everybody on earth was mortally afraid of her. And everybody, who happened to be anybody in New York, was exactly that--with a few eccentric exceptions like her nephew, Karl Westguard, and half a dozen heavily upholstered matrons whose social altitude left them nothing to be afraid of except lack of deference and death. Mrs. Sprowl had a fat, wheezy, and misleading laugh; and it took time for Strelsa to understand that there was anything really venomous in the old lady; but the gossip there that afternoon, and the wheezy delight in driving a last nail into the coffin of some moribund reputation, made plain to her why her hostess was held in such respectful terror. The talk finally swerved from Molly Wycherly's ball to the Irish Legation, and Mrs. Sprowl leaned toward Strelsa, and panted behind her fan: "A perfect scandal, child. The suppers those young men give there! Orgies, I understand! No pretty actress in town is kept sighing long for invitations. Even"--she whispered the name of a lovely and respectable prima-donna with a perfectly good husband and progeny--and nodded so violently that it set her coughing. "Oh," cried Strelsa, distressed, "surely you have been misinformed!" "Not in the least," wheezed the old lady. "She is no better than the rest of 'em! And I sent for my nephew Karl, and I brought him up roundly. 'Karl!' said I, 'what the devil do you mean! Do you want that husband of hers dragging you all into court?' And, do you know, my dear, he appeared perfectly astounded--said it wasn't so--just as you said a moment ago. But I can put two and two together, yet; I'm not too old and witless to do that! And I warrant you I gave him a tongue trouncing which he won't forget. ... Probably he retailed it to that O'Hara man, and to young Quarren, too. If he did it won't hurt 'em, either." She was speaking now so generally that everybody heard her, and Cyrille Caldera said: "Ricky is certainly innocuous, anyway." "Oh, _is_ he!" said Mrs. Sprowl with another wheezy laugh. "I fancy I know that boy. Did you say 'harmless,' Susanne? Well, _you_ ought to know, of course----" Cyrille Caldera blushed brightly although her affair with Quarren had been of the most innocent description. [Illustration: "'A perfect scandal, child. The suppers those young men give there!'"] "There's probably as much ground for indicting Ricky as there is for indicting me," she protested. "He's merely a nice, useful boy----" "Rather vapid, don't you think?" observed a thin young woman in sables and an abundance of front teeth.