Page:Saxe Holm's Stories, Series Two.djvu/359

Rh sketched in outline before we come to those days of danger and escape.

When she and Mrs. Lawton returned from Europe and settled themselves again in their old home, the event produced no small stir in all circles. The two richest women of the town,—each young, each enjoying absolute control of her property, each bright and individual, each gay and pleasure-loving, and keeping together a house of free and gracious hospitalities. What Susan Sweetser and Bell Lawton did, said, wore, afforded all the material that a whole town full of first-class gossips could need; and what Susan Sweetser and Bell Lawton offered and provided and arranged for in way of hospitable entertainment was enough to keep social life going from one year's end to the other. It is not necessary to say that they became the leaders of the town; that their house was its social centre. First and foremost among the men who sought the pleasure and the honor of familiar and friendly footing in the house was Professor Edward Balloure. He found his warm-hearted little pupil and friend changed into a brilliant woman of the world; no less warm-hearted, no less impulsive, than of old, but educated, trained, developed, into such a woman as nothing but years of European travel and culture could have produced. It was not necessary now for Bell to explain social convenances to Susan. It was not necessary for her to point out to her the dangers of intimacies with men who had