Mrs. Robson sat down with preening self-satisfaction. Wearily the
daughter dropped into the seat which Mrs. Condor proffered. The name of
Ned Stillman was not unfamiliar to any San Franciscan who scanned the
social news with even a casual glance, and Claire had a vague
remembrance that Mrs. Condor also figured socially, but in a rather more
inclusive way than her companion. At all events, it was plain that her
mother, with unerring feminine insight, had placed the pair to her
satisfaction. Already the elder woman was contriving to let Stillman
know something of _her_ antecedents. _She_ was Emily Carrol, also of
Rincon Hill, and of course he knew her two sisters--Mrs. Thomas Wynne
and Mrs. Edward Finch-Brown! As Stillman returned a smiling assurance to
Mrs. Robson's attempts to be impressive, a young woman in white arrived
with ice-cream and messy layer-cake. Unconsciously Claire Robson began
to smile. She could not have said why, but somehow the presence of Ned
Stillman and Mrs. Condor at a table spread with such vacuous delights
seemed little short of ridiculous. They did not fit the picture any more
than her beetle-browed, red-lipped Serbian who.... She turned
deliberately and swept the room with her glance. Of course he had gone.
It was not to be expected that _he_ would descend to the level of such
puerile feasting. A sudden contempt for everything that only an hour ago
seemed so desirable rose within her, and, in answer to the young woman's
query as to whether she preferred coffee to ice-cream, she answered with
lip-curling aloofness:

"Neither, thank you.... I am not hungry."

Stillman looked at her searchingly. She returned his gaze without
flinching.