profligate Nature. Mimi took only a perfunctory interest in these changes other than vouchsafing a listless “They’re pretty,” when pressed for comment by Mrs. Daquin.
Mimi at times was amazed at her ready acceptance of the uneventful life. She was grateful that she had apparently been wrong in her estimation of her stepmother. Mrs. Daquin seemed changed, chastened by Jean’s death. She had really loved her husband in her own fashion even when she had been most irritated by what to her seemed his lack of intelligence in grasping opportunities for advancement or gain. Now that he was dead, she found herself regarding him not in the light of the later years but more as she had during their short courtship and the first year of their marriage. This mood was sustained by the very evident advantages which she found coming to her as a recently bereaved widow. She knew that in time this too would pass. In time Jean would be but a faint memory to most of those with whom she associated.
It was not conscious dishonesty nor was she a deliberate poseuse when she accepted the little attentions, the deference which they bestowed on her. Mrs. Daquin found herself for the first time a personage in her own right. All her youth she had lived under the dominating influence of her father, and even after her marriage to so retiring a person as Jean, she found that her handicap in being a woman in a conventional society was very great. Her father had not attended the funeral but he had wired and written her repeatedly urging her to return to Chicago. This she resolved not to do—at least not unless circumstances compelled such a step—for she was enjoying too greatly for immediate surrender her new importance.
The mood thus engendered worked to Mimi’s advantage though she did not fully understand the reasons for that good fortune. Mrs. Daquin was kindly in her manner, far more so than she had ever been before. When after a few weeks they began to be seen on the streets, Mimi was