The other members of this intimate little coterie of friends, five in all, looked at one another and burst into involuntary laughter.
Wallace Martin, an old young man, a magazine writer, who would fain be a playwright, gave the single bark of mirth which served him for an explosion of laughter. It sounded particularly derisive now.
"I would give my little all to have the new Mrs. Hepworth hear you say that," he chuckled. "Dear old Hewston, she would not in a thousand years consider any of us in her class. She belonged, let me inform you, to one of the oldest of southern families. Her mother was a cotton princess of the loveliest and haughtiest variety. One of the famous belles of her day. Her father, too, was of the old South."
"Why, what are you talking about?" growled Hewston irascibly. "She hadn't a dime--was a beautiful cloak model or something of that kind."
"She painted dinky things for a living, if you mean that," said Martin carelessly, "lamp-shades and menu cards and such."
"If she only had some friends, even one relative," deplored Mrs. Hewston, "it would look so much--er--nicer, you know. Relatives do add a background." She shook her head regretfully.
"We'll have to be her relatives," said Maud Carmine, a niece of Mrs. Hewston and a plain rather faded young woman of pale and indefinite tints and many angles. Her claim to distinction rested on the fact that she was a drawing-room musician of--strange anomaly--real musical feeling. It was her misfortune always to be explained by those who found her tact, good nature and practical common sense useful, and who drew heavily on them, as, "not attractive looking, you know; but pure gold, and one of the most dependable persons," and this damning tribute of friendship served as an admirable check to further curiosity concerning her. "Yes, we must be her background." Her glance lingered for a moment on Wallace Martin, but he returned it briefly and indifferently.
"A young woman who has just married millions needs no family group," remarked Alice Wilstead lightly. "The most effective background is her husband."
"Gad!" Mr. Hewston put down his knife and fork to glare at her. "The idea of looking at Hepworth as a background. He who has always been in the front of everything. A background! And for a snub-nosed chit of a girl!"