Why, of all the people lecturing at Columbia University, Charlie had singled out Edmund Keller as a hero she had no idea. As far as Rose was concerned, the relationship between their two families had died with old Hetty. But earlier that fall, when Charlie had met the popular lecturer and Keller had expressed his warm remembrance of the Master family’s role in his own father’s career, Charlie had been delighted.

“I realized we still have some of his father’s photographs,” he told his mother. “He even asked me if I meant to be a patron of the arts.”

“He’s trying to flatter you.”

“It’s not like that,” Charlie said, with a frown. “You don’t understand. Keller’s a pretty important person at Columbia; he doesn’t need us.”

It was true that, with commendable restraint in her opinion, Butler had allowed Mr. Keller to continue his career as a university teacher, and that Keller had done quite well. But in her mind, two facts remained. Firstly, Edmund Keller had been, and no doubt still was, a socialist. Secondly, her son was far too impressionable.

And now Charlie, in an act of childish idiocy, had asked the man to one of her select parties. But looking at Charlie’s fair-haired, blue-eyed face, it now occurred to her that it might be wiser if she used a little subtlety. Keller must be dealt with, but in a way that wouldn’t antagonize her son.

“He really wouldn’t like the party, Charlie,” she said. “But let’s do something even better. Ask him to come to dinner with us, just a family dinner, where we can get to know him better, and talk.”

A week later, Edmund Keller, suitably attired in a dinner jacket and black tie, came to call at the house. When Charlie had first suggested he come to a party at his parents’ house, he’d been a little uncertain. He remembered that Rose had once referred to his views as socialistic at a luncheon—though it had been said during an argument, and was years ago anyway—so he’d assumed that she didn’t much care for him. But the pressing invitation he now received to a family dinner seemed to indicate that there were no bad feelings at all.

He wasn’t a fool, but the world in which Edmund lived operated in a slightly different manner from Rose’s. It had not occurred to him that if Rose Master invited him to a family dinner, it was not a compliment at all, or an expression of friendship, but a signal that she didn’t wish him to meet her friends. He walked quite contentedly, therefore, unaware that he was an undesirable.