She hoped that Constance would not appreciate how completely Lucille had rehabilitated herself in a worldly sense, and she tried to counteract the effect of the evidence by letting fall a remark now and again to show that the memory of her daughter's conduct was still a thorn in her side. As a mother she could not but be thankful that her daughter was far happier as Mrs. Bradbury Nicholson than she had been as Mrs. Clarence Waldo. At the same time her being so was a blow to the theory that the exchange of one husband for another ought to end and ordinarily does end in misery; or, in other words, that divorced people who marry again should be and are apt to be unhappy. To be sure, it was early to judge, and the happiness might not last; and at best it should be regarded as a sporadic case of contradiction, a merciful exception to the general rule; but she was glad when the day arrived for removing Constance from the sphere of this influence, fearing perhaps some pointed question from her secretary which would invite her to explain how it was that a person who had deserved so little to be happy as Lucille should have found divorce and remarriage a blessing, if the whole proceeding in deserving cases was fundamentally opposed to the social well-being of civilization. As an antidote, Mrs. Wilson took pains to enlighten her as to the rumored depravity of Clarence Waldo and the late Mrs. Howard. But Constance asked aloud no such question. Yet necessarily she perceived that Lucille was in the best of spirits, and apparently had suffered no loss of position by her conduct. Constance did not need, however, any reminder from Mrs. Wilson that the late Mrs. Waldo was not a person of the finest sensibilities; moreover she considered the point as definitely settled for herself. Nevertheless as a spectator, if no more, she noted the circumstance that Lucille was already a different woman in consequence of her second marriage, and she detected her reason challenging her conscience with the inquiry which Mrs. Wilson had dreaded, how it appeared that the world would have been better off if Lucille had simply left the husband who had been faithless to her, and remained single instead of marrying. Constance was merely collecting evidence, as it were. All was over between her and Gordon, but as an intelligent, sentient human being she had no intention of playing the ostrich, but insisted on maintaining an open mind.