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itself, being pompous, but charm and grace also eluded it. Charlotte Hoyt had built and decorated as she dressed and did her hair: appropriately for her station in life. Conventionality in nonessentials left the mind clear for bigger things. And what were they, Clara mused, as she noted, with a mild surprise, that her own portrait, recently done, had taken the place of honor over the mantel at the expense of one of her sisters-in-law?
    "I am much honored," she observed, pointing to the canvas as Mrs. Hoyt bustled in.
    "Well, Elena rather objected to being relegated to the dining room, but I told her we must all take our turns over the fireplace in here. Besides, you're the prettiest member of the family."
    "I hope you didn't tell her that."
    "Of course I told her." And of course she had. "I also told her she was going to have to watch her hip line or else watch her husband. She may not have inherited my looks, lucky child, but she's inherited some of my vulnerability to calories."
    "Oh, Elena has a fine figure, Mrs. Hoyt! And she'll never have to worry about Phil. I've never seen a more devoted husband."
    "But a widening
derrière
can be a tough test for devotion. Don't think
I
don't know. Which, by the way, my dear, reminds me of something I meant to speak to you about. Hamilton—your revered father-in-law—has been seeing rather too much of Mrs. Atkins lately. I don't want you or Elena or Maribel to have her for dinner or even for cocktails."
    "Mrs. Atkins? Do I even know her?"
    "You will. Hamilton is bound to introduce you. He has a mania for bringing his lady friends together with his family. God knows why. He's rather slowed down in that department in the last couple of years—since you and Trevor were married—so I haven't had to speak to you about it. I've always put up with his little goings-on—I'm enured to them. But when he becomes too obvious, I put my foot down. I let it be known that the family is off limits. That usually does the trick. He'll do anything for a peaceful interior."
    "Mrs. Hoyt, you're wonderfull You really are."
    "Nonsense, my dear. I'm simply practical. Now, as to this job on
Style,
I'm all for it."
    "I'm so glad."
    "It should teach you all kinds of things that women brought up as we were are not apt to learn. How the world outside society, for example, looks at society. And whether their picture of us is quite as inaccurate as we like to think. They are inclined to see us as snobbish and cliquish and overly concerned with dress and table manners and all manner of trivia. Maybe we are. Or at least more than we care to contemplate."
    "Well, you're certainly not."
    "But I sometimes think I go too far the other way. Maybe I'd have done better had I worked on something like
Style
as a young woman. Instead of scorning it, had I learned to analyse just what the fashionable life is made up of. Just what a dress or a hat or a table setting or a hairdo
can
be. If you really
know
something, maybe it's less apt to swell out of proportion."
    Clara thought of her friend Polly's passion for detail. "If it doesn't enfold and smother you."
    "Oh, don't worry. You can handle it. There may be great things in store for you, my dear."
    "What things?"
    "I'm not a fortune teller, but nice things, I'm sure. In the meantime you must content yourself with being our pride and joy."
    Clara was not entirely easy as she walked back to the gatehouse. Had she been insidiously manipulated? It was all very well to be called someone's "pride and joy," but who was responsible for this work of art? The society that had clasped her so tightly to its bosom might also be squeezing the last drop of juice out of her. And what was that juice but the soul of Clarabel Longcope Hoyt?

4
    I T WAS POLLY who suggested to Clara that she compose an article on the subject of the gatehouse, which the Hoyts had allowed her to remodel. Clara had, in her first half year at
Style,
already enjoyed a small flurry of success with a