All this sort of thing seemed to him to have a touch of the theater about it.

But Claudia took it seriously; she did not forbid him to write to her, but she answered none of his letters, and Lord Rickmansworth, whom he encountered at one of the October race-meetings, gave him to understand that she was living a life of seclusion at Territon Park.

Rickmansworth openly scoffed at this behavior, and Eugene did not know whether to be pleased at finding his views agreed with, or angry at hearing his mistress's whims treated with fraternal disrespect.

Ultimately, he found himself, under the influence of lunch, coinciding with Rickmansworth's dictum that girls rather liked making fools of themselves, and that Claudia was no better than the rest.

It was one of Eugene's misfortunes that he could not cherish illusions about his friends, unless his feeling toward Stafford must be ranked as an illusion.