call a society man. I haven't the time."

Mrs. Groome was not usually blunt, but she suddenly scented danger and she
had not fully recovered her poise.

"You are in business?" She disliked business intensely. All gentlemen of
her day had followed one of the professions.

"I am in a wholesale commission house. But I hope to be in business for
myself one day."

"Ah."

Still, all young men in this terrible twentieth century could not be
lawyers. Mrs. Groome knew enough of the march of time to be aware of the
increasing difficulties in gaining a bare livelihood. Tom Abbott was a
lawyer, like his father before him, and his grandfather in the fifties. It
was one of the oldest firms in San Francisco, but she recalled his frequent
and bitter allusions to the necessity of sitting up nights these days if a
man wanted to keep out of the poorhouse.

And at least this young man did not look like an idler or a wastrel. No man
could have so clear a skin and be so well-groomed at six in the morning
if he drank or gambled. Alexander Groome had done both and she knew the
external seals.

"Is Aileen Lawton a friend of yours?" she asked sharply.

"I have met Miss Lawton at a number of dances but she has not done me the
honor to ask me to call."