I descended to breakfast in a strange turmoil. To think I had never asked to hear Jessie’s story.

I must have entered the breakfast room with my musings on my face, for Mrs. Hunnowell stared at me with a particularly annoying expression, as if to say, Ah! Ah! I know your secret. You dear little thing. She turned to Mama and said, “Mrs. Thomas, do you and your husband take to the opera down in New York?”

My mother paused, aware of my quiet form passing behind her to take my seat.

“The opera, Mrs. Hunnowell. We do, yes, enjoy it very much, although I must admit a preference for light opera. I prefer my passions leavened by spots of gaiety. By contrast, upon leaving one of Mr. Wagner’s operas—meant, I am sure, to cure what ails me—I am often besieged with a heaviness, as though I’d spent all night straining to see into the darkness behind a window, to find after all that it is only dawn that lies on the other side.”

“Really, Mrs. Thomas. How prosy a thought. It makes one despair. Quite. In these strange times, often the opera is the only place in which to find unmixed sentiment.”

“Strange times, Mrs. Hunnowell?”

“Strange and dreadful. There is no longer such a thing as sentiment these days, my dear. Last night I lay reading one of that sunflower gentleman’s new plays—”

“You don’t mean Oscar Wilde, Mother?” Bart Hunnowell’s velvet voice curled up from the cushioned depths of a sofa on which, evidently, he had been lying the entire breakfast.

“Just so. Thank you, dear. I lay reading Mr. Wilde—”

“Really, madame,” Mr. Cutting broke in, “I cannot believe I have heard you correctly.”

With a polite sigh, she turned her attention upon him. “Why, Mr. Cutting, I said I was reading Mr. Wilde.”

“But that is shocking, Mrs. Hunnowell. How came your husband to allow such filth into your house?”

“I am the arbiter of taste in our household, Mr. Cutting.” Again came the delicate and patient little sigh. “Women are far more able judges than men as to what is and what isn’t worthy literature.”

Mr. Cutting wiped his mouth carefully and put down his napkin. “Perhaps, Mrs. Hunnowell, the feminine taste for literature is more easily able to disregard the harder facts of life. Mr. Wilde is in prison, madame, for unspeakable crimes committed against decency.”

“Well,” Mrs. Hunnowell parried, not in the least undone, “the man ought to be in prison who would write such a love scene in which the hero says, ‘Please pass the butter dear’ to his lady love.”

A delighted guffaw rose up from the sofa.

I turned in my chair to regard the old lady.

“Butter!” continued Mrs. Hunnowell. “Where is the sentiment in butter? The most unromantic thing I ever heard of.”

“Why is that, ma’am?” I interposed.