but the depravity of which she never was entirely able to comprehend.

In March the Seagrave twins arrived at the alleged age of discretion. On
their twenty-first birthday the Half Moon Trust Company went solemnly
into court and rendered an accounting of its stewardship; the yearly
reports which it had made during the term of its trusteeship were
brought forward, examined by the court, and the great Half Moon Trust
Company was given an honourable discharge. It had done its duty. The
twins were masters of their financial and moral fate.

It was about that moribund period of the social solstice when the fag
end of the season had fizzled out like a wet firecracker in the April
rains; and Geraldine and Kathleen were tired, mentally and bodily. And
Scott was buying polo ponies from a British friend and shotguns from a
needy gentleman from Long Island.

It had been rather trying work to rid Geraldine of the aspirants for her
fortune; during the winter she was proposed to under almost every
conceivable condition and circumstance. Kathleen had been bored and
badgered and bothered and importuned to the verge of exhaustion; Scott
was used, shamelessly, without his suspecting it, and he generally had
in tow a string of financially spavined aspirants who linked arms with
him from club to club, from theatre to opera, from grille to grille,
until he was pleasantly bewildered at his own popularity.

Geraldine was surprised, confused, shamed, irritated in turn with every
new importunity. But she remained sensible enough to be quite frank and
truthful with Kathleen, except for an exciting secret engagement with
Bunbury Gray which lasted for two weeks. And Kathleen was given strength
sufficient for each case as it presented itself; and now the fag end of