"Yes," replied the managing editor, "the fellow that they say has
been trying to capture your friend Miss Winslow."

I did not reply for the moment. Forbes, I had already learned, was
deeply in debt. Was it part of his plan to get control of the
little fortune of Violet to recoup his losses?

"Do you know Mrs. de Lancey?" pursued the editor.

"No--not yet," I answered. "I was just wondering what sort of
person she is."

"Oh I suppose she's all right," he answered, "but they say she's
pretty straight-laced--that cards and all sorts of dissipation are
an obsession with her."

"Well," I argued, "there might be worse things than that."

"That's right," he agreed. "But I don't believe that such a
puritanical atmosphere is--er--just the place to bring up a young
woman like Violet Winslow."

I said nothing. It did not seem to me that Mrs. de Lancey had
succeeded in killing the natural human impulses in Violet, though
perhaps the girl was not as well versed in some of the ways of the
world as others of her set. Still, I felt that her own natural
common sense would protect her, even though she had been kept from
a knowledge of much that in others of her set was part of their
"education."