owy Ames vault by many thousands. The period of
decorous mourning past, Mrs. Hawley-Crowles blithely doffed her weeds
and threw herself again into the terrific competition for social
standing, determined this time that it should be a warfare to the
death.

And so it bade fair to prove to her, when the eminent nerve
specialist, Dr. Bascom Ross, giving a scant half hour to the
consideration of her case, at the modest charge of one hundred
dollars, warned her to declare a truce and flee to the Alps for
unalloyed rest. She complied, and had returned with restored health
and determination just as her sister came up from South America,
bringing the odd little "savage" whom Reed had discovered in the wilds
of Guamoco. A prolonged week-end at Newport, the last of the summer
season, accounted for her absence from the city when Reed brought
Carmen to her house, where he and his wife were making their temporary
abode. Six months later, in her swift appraisal of the girl in the
Elwin school, to whom she had never before given a thought, she seemed
to see a light.

"It does look like a desperate chance, I admit," she said, when
recounting her plans to her sister a day or so later. "But I've played
every other card in my hand; and now this girl is going to be either a
trump or a joker. All we need is a word from the Beaubien, and the
following week will see an invitation at our door from Mrs. J. Wilton
Ames. The trick is to reach the Beaubien. That I calculate to do
through Carmen. And I'm going to introduce the girl as an Inca
princess. Why not? It will make a tremendous hit."

Mrs. Reed was not less ambitious than her sister, but hitherto she had
lacked the one essential to social success, money. In addition, she
had committed the egregious blunder of marrying for love. And now that
the honeymoon had become a memory, and she faced again her growing
ambition, with a struggling husband who had neither name nor wealth to
aid her, she had found her own modest income of ten thousand a year,
which she had inherited from her mother, only an aggravation. True, in
time her wandering father would pass away; and there was no doubt that
his vast property would fall to his daughters, his only living kin.
But at present, in view of his aggressively good health and disregard
for his relatives, her only recourse was to attach herself to her
wealthy, sharp-witted sister, and hope to be towed safely into the
social swim, should that scheming lad