"Precisely--and she has him stalked; but daughter may spoil her plans--she has a mind of her own where she is intimately connected, I fancy. She has not got that black hair and dark eyes for nothing." "Hum!" said Burgoyne, watching her with an appraising glance. "She sure is a looker--I don't blame the fellows for dancing attendance. If it were a couple of hundred years earlier they would be rapiering one another behind the coffee-house at sunrise.... Who is the man Madame Emerson has selected for her daughter?" "Our friend." "Not Warwick Devereux?" Pendleton smiled acquiescence. "Good Lord! Does Devereux know it?" "I fancy not!" Pendleton laughed--"but those who are looking on with a knowing eye are wise to the mater's plan. Oh, she is a manager and a schemer all right." "Does _Miss Emerson_ know it?" Burgoyne asked. "If she does she's not betraying it--though she can't be blind to Devereux's dollars nor to his worth." "Nor to his family," the other added. Pendleton nodded. "It will be a great stroke for Mrs. Emerson if she can marry her daughter into the Devereux-d'Este connection. Then she can rest from her labors and her works will follow her. She will have arrived." "She is a trifle slow in coming into the dock, however," Burgoyne observed. "Give her time--she's headed straight--has been from the start--and she has never missed a port yet. I've great faith in the old girl--she'll land Dev for the daughter, I'll bet a fiver on it. He is too old to stampede--she must drive him in slowly." "You're mixing your metaphors!" Burgoyne laughed. "Maybe I am--but she'll not get mixed in her purposes. Have another drink?--No?--Then let us go up and sit on the piazza, and look at the real thing--the butterflies whose frivolities and frivoling make a country club endurable." "Or unendurable!" his friend added. "Depends on your point of view--and also your digestion. For my part, my digestion being normal I enjoy watching them--their methods: their little schemes, their jealousies, their punishments, their petty deceptions and meannesses--all interest me in a casual way. I like to sit back and study them--they amuse me." "Is that all they do--amuse you?" Burgoyne asked. "Haven't they any kindness or generosity or unselfishness?" "Not much--certainly not here at the Club. Every woman's hand is against every other woman, and she usually has a hat-pin concealed in it--if that's possible. It's trite but true that a woman is a good hater and a poor forgetter, and is utterly without conscience in matters of friendship or of truth." "Where did you acquire all your cynicism?" Burgoyne demanded. "With my years--and on the piazza!" "Well, you would better find an optimistic chair and a clearer vision. You're flocking too much to yourself."