Miss Maitland, Private Secretary

Chapman Price was leaving Grasslands. Events had been rapidly advancing to that point for the last three months, slowly advancing for the last three years. Everybody who knew the Prices and the Janneys said it was inevitable, and people who didn't know them but read about them in the "society papers" could give quite glibly the reasons why Mrs. Chapman Price was going to separate from her husband. His friends said it was her fault; Suzanne Price was enough to drive any man away from her—selfish, exacting, bad tempered, a spoiled child of wealth. Chappie had been a first-rate fellow when he married her and she'd nagged and tormented him past bearing. Her friends had a different story; Chapman Price was no good, had neglected her, was an idler and a spendthrift. Hadn't the Janneys set him up in business over and over and found it hopeless? What he had wanted was her money, and people had told her so; her mother had begged her to give him up, but she would have him and learned her lesson, poor girl! Those in the Janney circle said there would have been a divorce long before if it hadn't been for the child. She had held them together, kept them in a sort of hostile, embattled partnership for years. And then, finally, that link broke and Chapman Price had to go. There had been a last conclave in the library that morning, Mrs. Janney presiding. Then they separated, silent and gloomy—a household of eight years, even an uncongenial one, isn't broken up without the sense of finality weighing on its members. Chapman had gone to his rooms and flung orders at his valet to pack up, and Suzanne had gone to hers, thrown herself on the sofa, and sniffed salts with her eyes shut. Mr. and Mrs. Janney repaired to the wide shaded balcony and there talked it over in low tones. They were…