only an uneasy wriggle, her audacity was the result of insolence and
envy, and her wit was restless spite. As her personal mannerisms grew
more and more odious to him, he began to dull his perceptions with
champagne. He had it for tea, he drank it with dinner, and during the
evening he took enough to insure that he would be well insulated when he
got home. This behavior spread alarm among his friends. It was
scandalous, and it did not occur among brewers. He was violating the
NOBLESSE OBLIGE of his guild. His father and his father's partners
looked alarmed.

When Fred's mother went to him and with clasped hands entreated an
explanation, he told her that the only trouble was that he couldn't hold
enough wine to make life endurable, so he was going to get out from
under and enlist in the navy. He didn't want anything but the shirt on
his back and clean salt air. His mother could look out; he was going to
make a scandal.

Mrs. Otto Ottenburg went to Kansas City to see Mr. Beers, and had the
satisfaction of telling him that he had brought up his daughter like a
savage, EINE UNGEBILDETE. All the Ottenburgs and all the Beers, and many
of their friends, were drawn into the quarrel. It was to public opinion,
however and not to his mother's activities, that Fred owed his partial
escape from bondage. The cosmopolitan brewing world of St. Louis had
conservative standards. The Ottenburgs' friends were not predisposed in
favor of the plunging Kansas City set, and they disliked young Fred's
wife from the day that she was brought among them. They found her
ignorant and ill-bred and insufferably impertinent. When they became
aware of how matters were going between her and Fred, they omitted no
opportunity to snub her. Young Fred had always been popular, and St.
Louis people took up his cause with warmth. Even the younger men, among
whom Mrs. Fred tried to draft a following, at first avoided and then
ignored her. Her defeat was so conspicuous, her life became such a
desert, that she at last consented to accept the house in Santa Barbara
which Mrs. Otto Ottenburg had long owned and cherished. This villa, with
its luxuriant gardens, was the price of Fred's furlough. His mother was
only too glad to offer it in his behalf. As soon as his wife was
established in California, Fred was transferred from St. Louis to
Chicago.

A divorce was the one thing Edith would never, never, give him. She told
him so, and she told his family so, and her f