For a while, Mother had been among those who severed friendship with Gertrude Williams. She was angry because of the curiosity the scandal had awakened in her two eldest children (Drew was eight at the time, too young to be interested in adult intrigue). But a year after the scandal became history, the Williamses suffered a tragedy that drew Mother back: Tad Williams, Constance and Johanna’s older brother, a strange kid still in grammar school at sixteen, quiet and gloomy and fat—all he ever seemed to do was eat—had found his father’s old revolver in the attic of the Williamses’ town house on Commonwealth Avenue. He didn’t check to see if it was loaded before he started playing with it. The maid heard the shot, and found him up there, dead from a bullet in his chest.

After the funeral, Gertrude Williams was unable to leave her room or sometimes even to get out of bed. Mother laid her grievances aside and began to visit her several times a week, bringing her cakes and pies she had baked. By the following summer, Gertrude was almost back to her old self, protesting the Spanish-American War (Dad thought she was being unpatriotic, if not downright treasonous, and Nathaniel agreed. How could anyone claim that the Rough Riders’ charge had been anything but the most glorious thing ever?); giving dinner parties attended by university presidents, famous professors, playwrights, and novelists; and dashing off to her suffragette meetings. When she installed herself in North Haven for the season, she gathered about her all the ladies who found her fascinating.