Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1931-03-02

often; he gave dinners and theater
parties himself that, no matter how
many people he might ask, were really
for Martha. He met them everywhere
at dances, at big parties, when he was
making a round of the night clubs, as
most nights he did, he was almost sure
to run into them somewhere.
Betty Rogers told him things; so did
his sister. Carol Wentworth was care
full and adroit; she knew Peter, and his
sensitive old-fashioned feeling about
things; she never repeated the mistake
of that first day by coupling Martha's
name with Ross or any other mans.
Betty, with no such need as Carols to
curb her tongue, was franker. And
those two, of course, weren't the only
ones from whom Peter heard things
No one actually suggested that Mar
tina was having an affair with Ross,
but 1t was in the air that she was in
love with him and he with her, and
that Tack was bitterly and resentfully
jealous, but, for some reason, powerless
to put an end to whatever was 60
ing on.
Tack and Martha, it seemed to Peter,
If what he heard about them had any
truth in it at ALL must be living in the
curiously precarious hand-to-mouth
fashion that is so amazingly common in
sort. Their credit was good enough
for them to be burdened with debt be-
cause, though they had very little
money, money was all around and be-
hind them both.
Tack was downtown, with Thayer,
Hibben & Co., but Peter gathered that
in spite of his. name, he had only a
job, not a partnership, He had his
salary whatever that might be- and the
oF g., 60
him by his father, who had been dead
for some years. The Thayer fortune
which was a large one, hadn't de-
scended to Tack yet, and whether or
not it ever would depended wholly upon
his mother. in whose strong and capa
BILE hands its control was vested.
She, according to Betty, was a strong
minded, bony doWager, who adored
Tack as utterly as she disapproved of
everything he did. She lived, mostly,
abroad, but came home periodically to
rake Tack over the Goals and pay off
his latest accumulation of debts. She
cordially disliked Martha, but, said
Betty, she would have disliked any girl
Tack married.
She's high church--she's absolutely
off divorce" said Betty. That's where
Marthas out of luck Tack hadn't
enough to give her anything in the way
of alimony if they split up, and that's
one thing the old girl wouldn't help
him out in--she'd probably change her
will if they got divorced and leave
everything to q, home for stray chip
hunks. And Martllas expensive, you
see. Even Ross hasn't a nickel, of
course"
AS for Martha, while the circum-
stances of her relation to her family
were wholly different, they led up to
strikingly similar result. Henry Cam
eron, her father, was, ostensibly, a rich
man, but he was one of those rich men
whose incomes never quite meet their
expenditures. He and Martha's mother
were divorced, and while they were
both. Peter supposed. normally fond of
Martha, they both seemed to be selfish
and self-centered, and they weren't
likely to do much of anything for her.
Shed have money eventually, when her
father died: her grandfather's will pro-
vided for that. But Mr. Cameron was.
according to Betty, an excellent life.
Martha's parents hadn't particularly
approved of her marriage to Tack, nor
had they, on the other hand, definitely