With the coming of the sweetbreads Mrs. Buchanan was saying confidentially to Mrs. Rainbow:—
"She's quite done for herself, you know. Mrs. Antony Crawford says that she will not have her again at her house. I should think that her mother would take her away. They say that Stanwood Phillips, too, has disgraced himself at Yale—awfully fast. But Venetia must be a perfect little fool. She might have had Stephen Lane."
"So might any girl who had money these ten years," Mrs. Freddie Stewart remarked positively.
"Beast of a temper, that man. I pity the girl he gets." ...
"I must tell you,—they were at the Ritz last summer when we were, and positively they didn't know enough French to order their food. Their chauffeur used to take them about, and he would go anywhere he had a mind to, you know. Positively helpless. So we took pity on them, you know, and showed them things for a time."
On the other side of the table Mrs. Crawford's voice was raised in protest to Helen.
"You can't shop in this place. Steele's has got as bad as the rest. I go to New York for everything." ...
"Isn't Sembrich getting too fat to sing?" ...
"Who is that new tenor? I heard him in London last spring. He was fine." ...
At last Helen ventured to say, "We should be starting, if we are to hear the Leonore overture."