Mrs. Richmond was established in splendor in five big rooms on the second floor of the east wing. She received her daughter in her office--a luxurious, library-like room with few signs that it was the seat of the administration of a household of forty-two servants. Indeed, Mrs. Richmond was little of an administrator. She nagged at and criticised Pinney, the superintendent, and Mrs. Lambert, the housekeeper. She picked flaws in accounts, usually in the wrong places. She delivered sharp talks on economy and extravagance. But things were run sloppily, as is bound to happen where the underlings learn that there is no such thing as justice, that criticism is as likely to fall upon good work as upon bad. The stealing and the waste grew apace; and though Richmond, each year, largely increased his wife’s allowance for the maintenance of their various establishments, she was never able to put by more than twenty-five thousand or thereabouts for her own secret, privy purse. Yet she was a most industrious woman, up early, to bed late. How did she occupy her time? Chiefly in taking care of her person. She was not highly intelligent about this. She wasted much of the time and most of the money she invested in the tragi-comic struggle for youth. Still, she got some results. Perhaps, however, most of her success in keeping down fat and wrinkles, and holding in her hair and her teeth in spite of self-indulgence as to both food and drink, was due to the superb constitution she had inherited. Mrs. Richmond came originally from Indiana; and out there they grow--or, in former days grew--a variety of the human species comparable to an oak knot--tough of fiber beyond belief, capable of resisting both fire and steel, both food and drink. There was small resemblance between mother and daughter save in the matter of figure. Beatrice’s sweet and pretty face was an inheritance from the Richmonds, though not from her father direct. Her shrewdness and persistence were from her father direct. The older woman in the pale-blue dressing gown looked up sharply as the younger, in pink and white, entered. But the sharp, angry glance wavered at sight of the resolute little face wearing an expression of faintly amused indifference. She had long since taken her daughter’s measure--and she knew that her daughter had taken hers. “What did you send for me about?” Beatrice asked. “You know very well.” “Chang?” “Chang! What does _that_ mean?” “It’s my pet name for our dear old friend Roger--Roger Wade. He calls me Rix. I call him Chang.” Mrs. Richmond seemed stupefied for the moment by this cool and candid shamelessness. “I hate beating round the bush,” pursued Beatrice. “So, I might as well tell you at the outset that I intend to marry him.” “Beatrice!” exclaimed her mother, electrified into panic.