“Good evening, Cousin Lucy,” said Mr. Babbitt, bounding toward her, “I’m glad to see you.” Miss Pride did not share his pleasure but glared straight through his head as if the gimlets of her eyes could puncture the optic nerve. She came to me with the letters. “Hello, Frank. Is Mary coming on for the holidays?” and as she took his hand, she gave me the bunch of envelopes and adroitly, so that no one could see, she pinched the fleshy part of my thumb between two fingernails so hard that I nearly cried out with pain.

For half a minute she stood there while Frank Whitney gave her news of his family. She did not release my thumb until he was finished and then she said, “I must go this minute. Hopestill, bring Frank when you and Philip come to the Countess’. I know Berthe will be delighted.”

“We’re all coming, Auntie,” said Hopestill. “This is Mr. Morgan, Aunt Lucy,”

“Good evening, sir,” said Miss Pride and glanced up at the portrait of her father. “Papa looks en prise. Do set his men up again, Philip.” And she left the room. The only proof I had that she had been angry were the two white crescent marks on my thumb made, in her rage at something with which I had no connection, in the way one hurls a teacup to the floor because the contents of a letter have infuriated him.

“Waiter, bring me my bill,” said Mr. Morgan with a foolish grin. “And cancel my membership in the Somerset. The bouncer gives me the creeps. Are you coming, baby?”

“No,” said Hopestill. “Before you go, Harry, will you apologize to all of us?”

“Now I suggest,” said Mrs. Babbitt in the voice of a peacemaker, “that Harry and John and I all go eat dinner by ourselves and let the ladies and gentlemen alone. Nobody’s mad now but if we don’t go right along everybody will be dreadfully mad except me.”

“I won’t be mad,” pouted Mr. Babbitt. “And Olga won’t be mad, will you, Olga?”

“Well, I’m damned,” said Mr. Morgan, using his hands as binoculars and directing them towards me. “Is that Olga? Troika-ho, Olga!”

They left, Mrs. Babbitt’s giggles leaving a wake behind. If I had been able to speak, I would have been profane, would have used every blasphemous and scatalogical oath I knew to tell Hopestill how I was affected by the knowledge that I had been the object of amused discussion. Olga! Her malice was so rich, so inventive that even now, exposed by the babblings of her drunken friends, she tried to hoodwink me. “I don’t think Sonie looks all that Slavic, do you, Frank?”

The evening lay in ruins. My disappointments, my humiliation, and my scorn bustled through the branches of my nerves, created a tic here and a tingling there, an ache in my skull and fever in my eyeballs.