ut the life of Paris had proved so congenial and its
"opportunities" so abundant that Miss Comstock had come to rely more and
more upon the "privilege of European residence" and dispensed altogether
with formal instruction.

She soon found that that was what the girls who came to her really
wanted, even if their parents had vague thoughts of other things. In
short, the Neuilly school was nothing else than a superior sort of
select _pension_ for eight or ten girls, with facilities for travel and
more or less "society." Miss Comstock herself--affectionately known to
"her girls" as "Pussy" Comstock--had been rather angular and plain in
the Toledo days, but under the congenial air of Paris and good
dressmakers had developed into a smart specimen of the free-lance,
middle-aged woman, with the sophistication of a thorough acquaintance
with the world and much prudence garnered from a varied experience. She
made an excellent impression upon the sort of parents she dealt with as
a "woman who really knows life," and the girls always liked her, found
her "a good chum." They called her "Pussy"! Miss Comstock kept with her
a dumpy little American woman with glasses, who did what educational
work was attempted, and the more tedious chaperonage. The Villa
Ponitowski, in a word, was one of the modern adjustments between the
ignorance and selfishness of parents and the selfishness and folly of
children. The parents handed over their daughters for a season to Miss
Comstock with a sigh of relief, believing that their girls would be
perfectly "safe" in her care and might possibly improve themselves in
language and knowledge of art and the world. And the daughters rejoiced,
knowing from the reports of other girls that they would have "a
perfectly bully time," freed from the annoying prejudices of parents,
and might pick up an adventure or two of a sentimental nature....

Into this final varnishing bath our heroine was plunged with her three
friends, in the autumn of 1902, when she was eighteen years old. The
girls arrived at the Villa from a motoring trip across Europe, during
which they had scurried over the surface of five countries and put up in
thirty-eight different hotels as the labels on their bags triumphantly
proclaimed. Miss Comstock received the party in her own little salon in
the rear of the Villa, where, after the elder Glynns had withdrawn,
liqueurs and cigarettes were served. Miss Comstock lit a cigarette,
perched her well-