revolutionized transient existence.
This one, on the Avenue, had a giant in a long blue livery coat who
opened their carriage door, and a hall in yellow and black onyx, and
maids and valets. After breakfast, when Honora sat down to write to Aunt
Mary, she described the suite of rooms in which they lived,--the brass
beds, the electric night lamps, the mahogany French furniture, the
heavy carpets, and even the white-tiled bathroom. There was a marvellous
arrangement in the walls with which Edith was never tired of playing,
a circular plate covered with legends of every conceivable want, from a
newspaper to a needle and thread and a Scotch whiskey highball.

At breakfast, more stimulants--of a mental nature, of course. Solomon in
all his glory had never broken eggs in such a dining room. It had onyx
pillars, too, and gilt furniture, and table after table of the whitest
napery stretched from one end of it to the other. The glass and silver
was all of a special pattern, and an obsequious waiter handed Honora
a menu in a silver frame, with a handle. One side of the menu was in
English, and the other in French. All around them were well-dressed,
well-fed, prosperous-looking people, talking and laughing in subdued
tones as they ate. And Honora had a strange feeling of being one
of them, of being as rich and prosperous as they, of coming into a
long-deferred inheritance.

The mad excitement of that day in New York is a faint memory now, so
much has Honora lived since then. We descendants of rigid Puritans, of
pioneer tobacco-planters and frontiersmen, take naturally to a luxury
such as the world has never seen--as our right. We have abolished kings,
in order that as many of us as possible may abide in palaces. In one day
Honora forgot the seventeen years spent in the "little house under the
hill," as though these had never been. Cousin Eleanor, with a delightful
sense of wrong-doing, yielded to the temptation to adorn her; and the
saleswomen, who knew Mrs. Hanbury, made indiscreet-remarks. Such a
figure and such a face, and just enough of height! Two new gowns were
ordered, to be tried on at Sutcliffe, and as many hats, and an ulster,
and heaven knows what else. Memory fails.

In the evening they went to a new comic opera, and it is the music of
that which brings back the day most vividly to Honora's mind.

In the morning they took an early train to Sutcliffe Manors, on the
Hudson. It is an historic place. First of all, afte