This financial set-back, while it had injured, for the time,
Arthur Breen's reputation for being "up and dressed," had not, to
any appreciable extent, curtailed his expenditures or narrowed the
area of his social domain. Mrs. Breen's dinners and entertainments
had been as frequent and as exclusive, and Miss Corinne had
continued to run the gamut of the gayest and best patronized
functions without, the Scribe is pained to admit, bringing home
with her for good and all both her cotillion favors and the
gentleman who had bestowed them. Her little wren-like head had
moved from side to side, and she had sung her sweetest and
prettiest, but somehow, when the song was over and the crumbs all
eaten (and there were often two dinners a week and at least one
dance), off went the male birds to other and more captivating
roosts.
Mrs. Breen, of course, raved when Corinne at last opened the door
of her cage for Garry,--went to bed, in fact, for the day, to
accentuate her despair and mark her near approach to death because
of it--a piece of inconsistency she could well have spared
herself, knowing Corinne as she had, from the day of her birth,
and remembering as she must have done, her own escapade with the
almost penniless young army officer who afterward became Corinne's
father.
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