A short life and a merry one." And then she joined the Hosacks, drank deep of the wine of adulation, and when, at odd times, the sound of Marty's voice echoed in her memory, she forced it out and laughed it away.

"Who Cares ?" was his motto too,--red lips and white face and hair that came out of a bottle! And now here was Gilbert Palgrave with the fire of love in his eyes.
IV When Mrs.Hosack rose from the dinner table and sailed Olympically into the drawing-room, surrounded by graceful light craft in the persons of Primrose and her girl friends, the men, as usual, followed immediately.
The house was bridge mad, and the tables called every one except Joan, the nice boy, and Gilbert Palgrave.
During the preliminaries of an evening which would inevitably run into the small hours, Joan went over to the piano and, with what was a quite unconscious touch of irony, played one of Heller's inimitable "Sleepless Nights," with the soft pedal down.

The large imposing room, a chaotic mixture of French and Italian furniture with Flemish tapestries and Persian rugs, which accurately typified the ubiquitous mind of the hostess, was discreetly lighted.

The numerous screened windows were open and the soft warm air came in tinged with the salt of the sea.
Palgrave, refusing to cut in, stood about like a disembodied spirit, with his eyes on Joan, from whom, since his arrival, he had received only a few fleeting glances.

He watched the cursed boy, as he had labelled him, slip over to her, lean across the piano and talk eagerly.
He went nearer and caught, "the car in half an hour," and "not a word to a soul." After which, with jealousy gnawing at his vitals, he saw Harry Oldershaw moon about for a few minutes and then make a fishlike dart out of the room.