tly she can be an eventual duchess, if she wishes. Young Lord
---- is still here, and his devotion in the Makeway quarter is
undisguised. Everyone likes him, and says he isn't the sort of young
fellow to be merely after her money; but no one can tell if Helen is
going to take him or not. I am sure of one thing, she will do as she
pleases.

There were beautiful jewels in evidence at the ball. Mrs. Makeway wore,
I believe, a dozen strings of the most gorgeous pearls. All _real_, of
course, with their money. They must represent a fortune in themselves.
Poor old Mrs. Hammond Blake came with _all_ her Switzerland amethysts,
and a few new topazes mixed in (she must have been at Lucerne last
summer). She looked like one of those glass gas-lit signs. But really,
all the best jewels in New York were there. And it is wonderful to see
how the women whose throats are going the way of the world have
welcomed the revival of black velvet if they haven't the pearl
collarettes. I shall be wanting something of the sort myself soon. Woe
is me! And John does keep looking so abominally young. I tell him out
of courtesy to me he must get old more quickly, or people will be
saying I married a man years younger than myself!

John says I needn't trouble to furnish people with subjects for
talking; they can make up their own. But I don't think we are gossips
nowadays here in America; do you? Which reminds me that everybody says
the Mathews are going to separate at last. She's going to Dakota, and
get it on incaptability, or cruelty, or some little thing like that.
Everybody wondered at first why, since she'd stood it so long, she was
going to divorce Ned now, at this late day, but it has leaked out.
Think of it--Charlie Harris! Aren't you surprised? It's only about two
years since _he_ divorced his wife. Mrs. Harris got the children, so I
presume Mrs. Mathews will keep hers to give Charlie in place of his
own. If I remember the number he will be getting compound interest! You
know the Mathews babies came with such lightning rapidity we lost
count. One was always confusing the last baby with the one that came
before it. Anyway, I think Charlie Harris gets the best of it; so, even
if it isn't altogether ideal to possess your children "ready made," as
it were, still Elsie Mathews is a charming woman, and I never could
bear Mrs. Harris. She told such awful fibs, and her exaggerations were
not decorative; they were criminal. Why, I couldn't recogniz