To be sure, she was over her “intellectual” phase and no longer carried marinated herring to the obscure studios. But she had not become any more manageable. Exactly what she was doing in New York no one knew. Indeed, no one knew her address beyond the vague fact that it was “in the fifties.” When someone said to her, “I wish you’d look up my friend so and so. She has a charming place on the Park and I know you’d find her amusing,” Hope replied with a warm smile, “It’s terribly sweet of you. Of course one never does anything one wants in New York, but do give me her address anyhow.” Only once had anyone seen her and that only by chance. A Miss Bradley, an elderly spinster, idling away an hour between appointments in Central Park, had come on Hopestill staring raptly at the sea lions who were being fed. “Oh, aren’t they beautiful?” the girl had cried. “Oh, aren’t they wondrous! Oh, if only I had seen them when I was a child. You know, Miss Bradley, that Aunt Lucy never let me go to the zoo.” Miss Bradley, reporting this uninhibited speech to Amy Brooks, said, “I expected her to give me a lecture on child psychology, but she spared me and we had a very pleasant little chat.”

Now that she had made the full circuit and had returned to the starting point, she was generally forgiven all her past peculiarities, and there was universal rejoicing in Miss Pride’s circle that the marriage, prophesied for so long, was at last to come off. In my exile, I was obliged to rely entirely on the Countess for my information, and she assured me that both Philip and Hopestill were ecstatic, that it made her quite giddy herself just to be in the same room with them. Hope, she said, had never looked so well or so handsome.