Philip agreed with a laugh and turning to me forgivingly, he explained that Mrs. Babbitt had been a Miss Brooks and therefore related both to Hopestill and, by marriage, to the Countess, and while no one had ever liked her, for she was a fool and had not worn stockings to her wedding, people forgot this and came to believe that the interloper from New Jersey had made her into what she was. Admiral Nephews had remarked to her, “Madam, thou art mated to a clown,” and ever afterwards it was the universal opinion that Mr. Babbitt had had the weight to drag her down. They came to Boston at Thanksgiving and Christmas to the great suffering of Mrs. Babbitt’s family who were, ironically enough, related in several different ways to the Cabots.

“I suppose it’s natural enough Hope’s taken up with them,” said Whitney. “She’s probably lonely in New York.”

“I would say the contrary,” returned Philip drily. “I’ve concluded that Sonie is right: Miss Lucy would have epilepsy if she came in here now. I’ll see what I can do.” And he called across the room to the group at the chess-table, “Don’t you think it’s time we went on to dinner?”

“Why, doctor, what a childish idea,” said Mr. Morgan, “we are just beginning our apéritif. It’s my party and I name the hour. By the way, doesn’t the Somerset Club serve meals?” He went back to his conversation, dismissing the interruption.

In spite of the objections one might make to his appearance or to his manner, whether one saw at once that he was crude or unscrupulous—for, although dissipation had obscured the sharpness of his face, a certain cunning remained in the eyes which did not look directly into other eyes—or whether he offended one’s intellectual principles, there was about the young millionaire something so magnetic that exposure to the same air he breathed was similar in its effect to a love-philter. I had thought, in the first minutes of my admittedly enraptured regard of him, when my mind, operating simultaneously on two levels saw him on one as irresistible and on the other as repellent, that the sensuality manifest in his face was the forerunner of the corruption into which Dr. Galbraith had helplessly sunk. But presently I revised the prophecy that in twenty years he would be as damned a soul as the old doctor. For while he was sentimental—this was apparent from his slang, that badge by which we recognize the members of an egotistical and tenderly self-indulgent order—he was also shrewd, noncommittal, and even tonight when he was drunk, constantly on guard against involving himself with Hopestill, with Philip, in a sense, with this very room.