es. Her husband had been of a much poorer social
origin than herself, but her own standing was of the very best. She was
a gay social figure, being invited much, entertaining freely, preferring
the company of younger men to those of her own age or older and being
followed ardently by one fortune hunter and another, who saw in her
beauty, wealth and station, an easy door to the heaven of social
supremacy.

The Dale home, or homes rather, were in several different places--one at
Morristown, New Jersey, another on fashionable Grimes Hill on Staten
Island, a third--a city residence, which at the time Eugene met them,
was leased for a term of years--was in Sixty-seventh Street, near Fifth
Avenue in New York City, and a fourth, a small lodge, at Lenox,
Massachusetts, which was also rented. Shortly after he met her the house
at Morristown was closed and the lodge at Lenox re-occupied.

For the most part Mrs. Dale preferred to dwell in her ancestral home on
Staten Island, which, because of its commanding position on what was
known as Grimes Hill, controlled a magnificent view of the bay and
harbor of New York. Manhattan, its lower wall of buildings, lay like a
cloud at the north. The rocking floor of the sea, blue and gray and
slate black by turn, spread to the east. In the west were visible the
Kill von Kull with its mass of shipping and the Orange Hills. In a boat
club at Tompkinsville she had her motor boat, used mostly by her boy; in
her garage at Grimes Hill, several automobiles. She owned several riding
horses, retained four family servants permanently and in other ways
possessed all those niceties of appointment which make up the
comfortable life of wealth and ease.

The two youngest of her girls were in a fashionable boarding school at
Tarrytown; the boy, Kinroy, was preparing for Harvard; Suzanne, the
eldest, was at home, fresh from boarding school experiences, beginning
to go out socially. Her debut had already been made. Suzanne was a
peculiar girl, plump, beautiful, moody, with, at times, a dreamy air of
indifference and a smile that ran like a breath of air over water. Her
eyes were large, of a vague blue-gray, her lips rosy and arched; her
cheeks full and pink. She had a crown of light chestnut hair, a body at
once innocent and voluptuous in its outlines. When she laughed it was a
rippling gurgle, and her sense of humor was perfect, if not exaggerated.
One of those naturally wise but as yet vague and formless ar