She laid an arm about Martie's waist as they went downstairs.
"You've heard that we've had trouble with the girls?" Rose said, in a confidential whisper. "Yes. Ida and May—after all Rodney had done for them, too! He did EVERYTHING. It was over a piece of property that their grandfather had left their father—I don't know just what the trouble was! But you won't mention them to Rod—?"
Everything was perfection, of course. There were cocktails, served in the big drawing room, with its one big rug, and its Potocka and le Brun looking down from the tinted walls. Martie sat between Rodney and the strange man, who was unresponsive.
Rodney, warmed by a delicious dinner, became emotional.
"That was a precious friendship of ours, to me, Martie," he said. "Just our boy-and-girl days, but they were happy days! I remember waking up in the mornings and saying to myself, 'I'll see Martie to-day!' Yes," said Rodney, putting down his glass, his eyes watering, "that's a precious memory to me—very."
"Is Rodney making love to you, Martie?" Rose called gaily, "he does that to every one—he's perfectly terrible!"
"How many children has Sally now?" Florence Frost, sickly, emaciated, asked with a sort of cluck.
"Four," Martie answered, smiling.
"Gracious!" Florence said, drawing her shawl about her.
"Poor Sally!" Rose said, with the merry laugh that accompanied everything she said.