She gave him to understand that she had no more desire to live with her son-in-law than he with her, and established herself in a small suite in the Palace Hotel.

After a "lifetime" in a provincial town, economizing mercilessly, she felt, she remarked in one of her rare expansive moments, that she had earned the right to look on at life in a great hotel.
The rainy season she spent in Southern California, moving from one large hotel crowded with Eastern visitors to another.

This uncommon self-indulgence and her devotion to Helene were the only weak spots Ruyler was able to discover in that cast-iron character.

She seldom attended the brilliant entertainments of her daughter and refused the endowed car offered by her son-in-law.

Helene married to the best _parti_ in San Francisco and quite happy, she seemed content to settle down into the role of the onlooker at the kaleidoscope of life.