ld have
felt angry and ashamed, but the automatic manner in which they rose to
the occasion and took the blow standing (Mrs. Oglethorpe often indulged
in the vernacular of her son, her Janet, and her Lee) made her rock with
silent mirth. She knew exactly how they felt!

They were a fine-looking set of women and handsomely dressed, but they
indisputably belonged to the old regime, and even Mrs. Tracy, the
youngest of them, had something of what Mary Zattiany called that
built-up look. They were fashionable but not smart. They carried
themselves with a certain conscious rigidity and aloofness which even
their daughters had abandoned and was a source of disrespectful amusement
to their iniquitous granddaughters. Although Mrs. Goodrich, Mrs.
Lawrence and Mrs. Tracy were more up to date in their general appearance,
wearing slightly larger hats and fewer feathers, with narrow dog collars
instead of whaleboned net, they were as disdainful as the others of every
art that aims to preserve something of the effect of youth; although they
were spickingly groomed. They accepted life as it was, and they had
accepted it at every successive stage, serene in the knowledge that in
this as in other things they were above the necessity of compromise and
subterfuge. They were the fixed quantities in a world of shifting values.

In age they ranged from fifty-six to sixty-two, with the exception of
Mrs. Tracy, who was a mere fifty-two. A few were stout, the others bony
and gaunt. Their hair was white or gray. Only Mrs. Tracy, with her
fresh complexion and soft brown hair, her plump little figure encased in
modern corsets, had got on the blind side of nature, as Mrs. Oglethorpe
had told Mary. The others were frankly elderly women, but of great
dignity and distinction, some charm, and considerable honesty and
simplicity. And their loyalty never failed them.

The luncheon was by no means easy and informal. Mary, by racking her
memory, recalled the first names of most of them and never in all her
varied life had she been more sweetly amiable, made so determined an
effort to please. She might not care what they thought of her, but she
was sorry for them, they had behaved very decently, and for Jane
Oglethorpe's sake alone the occasion must be a success. She was ably
seconded by Mrs. Goodrich, who stared at her in wide-eyed admiration and
rattled off the gossip of New York, and by Mrs. Tracy, who had an
insatiable interest in diplom