At first, Society had resented it--a few resented it actively--but soon they began to soften a bit, and not to be quite blind when she was in the vicinity. Stephanie Lorraine was of unimpeachable birth. Her ancestors had been in Society as long as there was any Society to be in--except aborigines; and if one, under such circumstances, assumes an attitude of superiority, the general herd will follow in time--even though the way be through the avenue of the Divorce Court. The difficulty in the case was that Mrs. Postlewaite and Mrs. Porterfield--the "Queen P's," as they were called--were a trifle recalcitrant. They ruled Society and they had not approved of Stephanie's doings even before she married. She had been quite too disregardful of conventions. Her affair with Amherst was shameful enough, they averred, but when it had culminated in the elopement, they were outraged beyond words--figuratively speaking, that is; there was no paucity and little repression of language in the actual. And when she suddenly returned, without a warning or even an intimation, and came up to the Club-house in the most casual manner--as though she had done _nothing! nothing! nothing!_ they were enraged at her "effrontery." It was the end of their reign, they saw, unless she were made to pay penance for her offence in sackcloth and ashes. The younger set would defy their authority--they were near to defying it now, with their new-fangled ideas and disregard for every convention that stood for the old order. They might overlook some things, even though they were bizarre and questionable, but Stephanie's offence was beyond the pale. If she were permitted to come back to all her old privileges, and to go unpunished by Society for her crime against it, then the reign of the dissolute and depraved had begun. And they shook their heads gravely, and with much decision resolved that it must not be.