Chapter 3
Alexandra was to hear more of Ivar's case, however. On Sunday
her married brothers came to dinner. She had asked them for that
day because Emil, who hated family parties, would be absent,
dancing at Amedee Chevalier's wedding, up in the French country.
The table was set for company in the dining-room, where highly
varnished wood and colored glass and useless pieces of china were
conspicuous enough to satisfy the standards of the new prosperity.
Alexandra had put herself into the hands of the Hanover furniture
dealer, and he had conscientiously done his best to make her
dining-room look like his display window. She said frankly that she
knew nothing about such things, and she was willing to be governed
by the general conviction that the more useless and utterly
unusab
