Mrs. Archibald Buckney, a large, generously made woman of perhaps
fifty, who stood a little apart from the group, with two young
women and a mild-looking blond young man, suddenly interrupted a
general discussion of scores and play with a personality.

"Is Clarence Breckenridge playing to-day, I wonder? Anybody seen
him?"

"Must be," said the more definite of the two rather indefinite
girls, with an assumption of bright interest. Leila Buckney, a few
weeks ago, had announced her engagement to the mild-looking blond
young man, Parker Hoyt, and she was just now attempting to hold
him by a charm she suspected she did not possess for him, and at
the same time to give her mother and sister the impression that
Parker was so deeply in her toils that she need make no further
effort to enslave him.

She had really nothing in common with Parker; their conversation
was composed entirely of personalities about their various
friends, and Leila felt it a great burden, and dreaded the hours
she must perforce spend alone with her future husband. It would be
much better when they were married, of course, but they could not
even begin to talk wedding plans yet, because Parker lived in
nervous terror of his aunt's disapproval, and Mrs. Watts
Frothingham was just now in Europe, and had not yet seen fit to
answer her nephew's dignified notification of his new plans, or
the dutiful and gracious note with which Miss Leila had
accompanied it.