d acquiescence, and with old family friends
she was charmingly dutiful and deferential, but always with the air of
sparing a few glittering drops to their age and dulness from the
overflowing cup of her youth and beauty and power. But with her
grandmother and aunts she had a new attitude of self-confidence, and to
her girl friends she was no longer the old intimate and equal, but a
being who had, for the moment at least, left them all behind. She would
show them the new silver, the new linens, the engagement-time frocks
that were in themselves a trousseau, and wish that Doris or Marion or
Virginia were engaged, too; it was such fun! And with older women, the
debutantes of six and eight and ten years ago, who had failed of all
this glory, who could only listen sweetly to the chatter of plans and
honours, and look in uncomplaining admiration at the blazing ring,
Leslie was quite merciless. The number of times that she managed to
mention her age, the fact that Madame Modiste had tried to give her
fittings after three o'clock under the impression that she was a
schoolgirl, and the "craziness" of "little me" going over all the late
Mrs. Liggett's chests of silver and china, perhaps only these
unsuccessful candidates for matrimony could estimate. Certainly Leslie
herself was quite unconscious of it, and truly believed what she heard
on all sides, that she was "adorable," and "not changed one bit," and
"just as unconscious that there was anything else in the world but
Acton, as a little girl with her first doll."

Christopher and Alice, in the first years of their married life, had
built a home at Glen Cove, and Christopher made this his wedding
present to his brother. Necessarily, even the handsomest of country
homes, if ten years old, needs an almost complete renovation, and this
renovation Acton and Leslie, guided by a famous architect, began
rapturously to plan, reserving a beautiful apartment not far from Alice
in Park Avenue for autumn furnishing and refitting.

All these activities and interests kept the lovers busy, and kept them
apart indeed, or united them only in groups of other people. But Acton
could bring his pretty sweetheart home from a dinner now and then, and
come into the old Melrose house for a precious half hour of murmuring
talk, or could sometimes persuade her to leave a tea or a matinee early
enough to walk a few blocks with him.

In this fashion they slipped away from a box party one Friday afternoon