suspicion everywhere--from a village sewing-circle to the
smartest gathering on Manhattan Island! You know it."

"I have never thought about it."

"Then think of it now. Whether it's rotten, as you say, or not, it's
so. It's one of the folk-ways of the human species. And if it is,
merely saying it's rotten can't alter it."

Mrs. Bailey's car was at the door; Clive took the great sable coat
from the maid who brought it and slipped it over the handsome
afternoon gown that his handsome mother wore.

For a moment he stood, looking at her almost curiously--at the
brilliant black eyes, the clear smooth olive skin still youthful
enough to be attractive, at the red lips, mostly nature's hue, at the
cheeks where the delicate carmine flush was still mostly nature's.

He said: "You have so much, mother.... It seems strange you should not
be more generous to a girl you have never seen."

His handsome, capable, and experienced mother gazed at him out of
friendly and amused eyes from which delusion had long since fled. And
that is where she fell short, for delusion is the offspring of
imagination; and without imagination no intelligence is complete. She
said: "I can be generous with any woman except where my son concerns
himself with her. Where anybody else's son is involved I could be
generous to any girl, even--" she smiled her brilliant smile--"even
perhaps not too maliciously generous. But the situation in your case
doesn't appeal to me as humorous. Keep away from her, Clive; it's
easier than ultimately to run away from her."

CHAPTER IX

The course of irresponsible amusement which C. Bailey, Jr., continued
to pursue at intervals with the fair scion of the house--road-house--of
Greensleeve, did not run as smoothly as it might have, and was not
unmixed with carping reflections and sordid care on his part, and with
an increasing number of interruptions, admonitions, and warnings on
the part of his mother.

That pretty lady, flint-hardened in the igneous social lava-pot,
continued to hear disquieting tales of her son's doings. They came to
her right and left, from dance and card-table, opera-box and supper
party, tea and bazaar and fashionable reception.

One grim-visaged old harridan of whom Manhattan stood in fawning fear,
bluntly informed her that she'd better look out for her boy if she
didn't want to become a grandmother.

Which infuriated and terrified Mrs. Bailey and set her thinking with
all the implac