Young People's Pride by Stephen Vincent Benet

Oliver had quite a little time to think things over as the two-seater purred along smooth roads toward New York. The longer he thought them over, the less amiable some few of the things appeared. He formed and rejected a dozen more or less incredible hypotheses as to what possible connection there could be between Mrs. Severance and Sargent Piper -- none of them seemed to fit entirely and yet there must be something perfectly simple, perfectly easy to explain -- only what on earth could it be?

He went looking through his mind for any scraps that might possibly piece together -- of course he hadn't known Peter since College without finding out that in spite of their extreme politeness toward each other, Peter's mother and father really didn't get on. Club-stories came to him that he had tried to get away from -- the kind of stories that were told about any prominent man, he supposed -- a little leering paragraph in "Town Gossip" -- a dozen words dropped with the easy assuredness of tone that meant the speakers were alluding to something that everyone knew by people who hadn't realized that he was Peter's friend. A caustically frank discussion of Mrs. Severance with Ted in one of Ted's bitter moods -- a discussion that had given Oliver a bad half-hour later with Louise.