So they let their decision be known and set quickly to work. It was acquiesced in by almost all elders and by those who naturally follow the leaders. Of the others, the majority thought that there was no haste in the matter, and composed themselves and awaited developments. The few who were independent, and accustomed to do as they pleased, were uninfluenced by the rest--but they waited also. And those that the Queen P's had thought would receive Stephanie with open arms--the fast members of the younger set--held off, and even edged away. They realized that the Lorraine affair had made their own conduct all the more marked, and they were afraid to take her up. As one of them put it: "A fellow feeling's all right--but we're not running an eleemosynary institution at this stage of the game." The degrees of intimacy, moreover, could be gauged by the manner of salutation. Some did not speak at all--some spoke only when it could not be avoided--some spoke when the occasion required--some spoke always but with a certain reserve--some spoke naturally, but went no further--some were as they had always been--friends. And Stephanie met them in kind. Gladys Chamberlain, Elaine Croyden, Dorothy Tazewell, Margaret Middleton, Helen Burleston, Sophia Westlake, and a few others among the women, were her friends. Pendleton, Burgoyne, Croyden, Mortimer, Fitzgerald, Devereux, Westlake, Devonshire and a score of others among the men. There is never a dearth of men where the woman is a beauty and well-born--that she is also a woman with a past only adds to her attractiveness. To but one person, other than her mother, did Stephanie reveal the incident of Lorraine's visit--and then not until some time thereafter. It was one evening when she and Pendleton had dined together alone at her home--Mrs. Mourraille being out of town for several days--and were sitting afterward in the piazza-room in the moonlight. "Stephanie," said he--after a pause, and apropos of nothing--dropping his cigarette into the ash tray on the taboret between them and lighting another, "what do you make out of Lorraine--isn't his conduct exceedingly queer?" "In what way?" she asked. "In not applying for a divorce." "Is that an exhibition of queerness on his part?" she smiled. "It is--he never does the natural thing. What would be idiotic in a sensible chap is just what one expects from him. That Saturday at the Club-house--afterward, you know--he was going to begin action on Monday. And Sunday you had the peculiar scene in the Park where he threatened you with its immediate filing and so on--yet since that day no one has ever heard him mention divorce."