Wolf tried in vain to imagine on what occasions Miss Gault would display flippancy, but he knew well enough what that word meant in regard to his mother. He was seized at that moment with an irresistible temptation to reveal to this woman the picture of her character with which he had been regaled for the last twenty-five years. It was a picture so extraordinarily different from the reality, that it made him wonder if all women, whether flippant or otherwise, were personal to the point of insanity in their judgments of one another. What his mother had told him was not even a caricature of Selena Gault. It referred to another person altogether.

“My mother has a lot of friends in town,” he began, rather lamely. Miss Gault cut him short.

“Of course she has! She’s a brave, high-spirited, ambitious woman. Of course she has!” And then, in a low, meditative voice that seemed to float wistfully over the years, “She was very much in love with your father.”