him to understand that she had no more desire to live with her son-in-law
than he with her, and established herself in a small suite in the Palace
Hotel. After a "lifetime" in a provincial town, economizing mercilessly,
she felt, she remarked in one of her rare expansive moments, that she had
earned the right to look on at life in a great hotel.

The rainy season she spent in Southern California, moving from one large
hotel crowded with Eastern visitors to another. This uncommon
self-indulgence and her devotion to Hélène were the only weak spots
Ruyler was able to discover in that cast-iron character. She seldom
attended the brilliant entertainments of her daughter and refused the
endowed car offered by her son-in-law. Hélène married to the best _parti_
in San Francisco and quite happy, she seemed content to settle down into
the role of the onlooker at the kaleidoscope of life. She spent eight
hours of the day and evening seated in an arm chair in the court of the
Palace Hotel, and for air rode out to the end of the California Street
car line, always on the front seat of the dummy. She was dubbed a "quaint
old party" by her new acquaintances and left to her own devices. If she
didn't want them they could jolly well do without her.


VI

Hélène's social success was immediate and permanent. Californians rarely
do things by halves. Society was no exception. She had "walked off" with
the most desirable man in town, but they were good gamblers. When they
lost they paid. She had married into "their set." They had accepted her.
She was one of them. No secret order is more loyal to its initiates.

During that first year and a half of ideal happiness Ruyler, in what