At first, Society had resented it—a few resented it actively—but soon they began to soften a bit, and not to be quite blind when she was in the vicinity. Stephanie Lorraine was of unimpeachable birth. Her ancestors had been in Society as long as there was any Society to be in—except aborigines; and if one, under such circumstances, assumes an attitude of superiority, the general herd will follow in time—even though the way be through the avenue of the Divorce Court.
The difficulty in the case was that Mrs. Postlewaite and Mrs. Porterfield—the "Queen P's," as they were called—were a trifle recalcitrant. They ruled Society and they had not approved of Stephanie's doings even before she married. She had been quite too disregardful of conventions. Her affair with Amherst was shameful enough, they averred, but when it had culminated in the elopement, they were outraged beyond words—figuratively speaking, that is; there was no paucity and little repression of language in the actual. And when she suddenly returned, without a warning or even an intimation, and came up to the Club-house in the most casual manner—as though she had done nothing! nothing! nothing! they were enraged at her "effrontery." It was the end of their reign, they saw, unless she were made to pay penance for her offence in sackcloth and ashes. The younger set would defy their authority—they were near to defying it now, with their new-fangled ideas and disregard for every convention that stood for the old order.
They might overlook some things, even though they were bizarre and questionable, but Stephanie's offence was beyond the pale. If she were permitted to come back to all her old privileges, and to go unpunished by Society for her crime against it, then the reign of the dissolute and depraved had begun. And they shook their heads gravely, and with much decision resolved that it must not be.
So they let their decision be known and set quickly to work. It was acquiesced in by almost all elders and by those who naturally follow the leaders. Of the others, the majority thought that there was no haste in the matter, and composed themselves and awaited developments. The few who were independent, and accustomed to do as they pleased, were uninfluenced by the rest—but they waited also. And those that the Queen P's had thought would receive Stephanie with open arms—the fast members of the younger set—held off, and even edged away. They realized that the Lorraine affair had made their own conduct all the more marked, and they were afraid to take her up. As one of them put it: "A fellow feeling's all right—but we're not running an eleemosynary institution at this stage of the game." The degrees of intimacy, moreover, could be gauged by the manner of salutation. Some did not speak at all—some spoke only when it could not be avoided—some spoke when the occasion required—some spoke always but with a certain reserve—some spoke naturally, but went no further—some were as they had always been—friends.
And Stephanie met them in kind.
Gladys Chamberlain, Elaine Croyden, Dorothy Tazewell, Margaret Middleton, Helen Burleston, Sophia Westlake, and a few others among the women, were her friends. Pendleton, Burgoyne, Croyden, Mortimer, Fitzgerald, Devereux, Westlake, Devonshire and a score of others among the men. There is never a dearth of men where the woman is a beauty and well-born—that she is also a woman with a past only adds to her attractiveness.
To but one person, other than her mother, did Stephanie reveal the incident of Lorraine's visit—and then not until some time thereafter.
It was one evening when she and Pendleton had dined together alone at her home—Mrs. Mourraille being out of town for several days—and were sitting afterward in the piazza-room in the moonlight.
"Stephanie," said he—after a pause, and apropos of nothing—dropping his cigarette into the ash tray on the taboret between them and lighting another, "what do you make out of Lorraine—isn't his conduct exceedingly queer?"