omehow," was Miss Lena's resolve. "Just let me
get the hang of things a little, and I'll show her!" Miss Quincy was
conscious that though she as yet lacked knowledge of their world, she
had the advantage of the inheritance of guile.

But things! things! things! Lena thought a little of the irony of
it--that all her life she had pined to be set in luxury, and yet now and
here the very rugs and chairs and soft lights, the pictures of
unrecognized subjects, the unfamiliar delicacies before her at the
table, all seemed to loom up and crush her into insignificance by their
importance and expensiveness. They were her masters still.

But it was not Lena's way to waste her time on abstractions. While she
sat and watched her fire crumble away into ashes, she was chiefly
occupied with the concrete, and there entered into her soul and took
possession of its empty chambers and began to mold her to her own
purposes the demon of social ambition, which is not the desire to do or
to be, but rather the longing to appear to be and to seem to do--to take
the chaff and leave the wheat.

Mastered by this powerful spirit, Lena actually did make great strides
in the next few days. She learned to lounge quite comfortably, to
pretend with verisimilitude, even to chatter a little, helped chiefly by
a certain persistent light-weight on the part of Mr. Lenox; but the life
was hard and the rewards meager. All the time she suspected Miss Elton
and Mrs. Lenox of despising her, because she had so much less than they.
Their kindliness was but an added insult.

CHAPTER XI

POLITICS AND PLAY

It was with joy that Lena stood, on Saturday night, with Mrs. Lenox and
Miss Elton on the veranda, and hailed the advent of a large red
automobile, which disgorged, besides Mr. Lenox, two dress-suit cases and
two young men. Mr. Percival had liked her in her natural state and with
him she would not need to "put on style". He was to her the shadow of a
great rock in a desperately thirsty land. The only kind of pretense that
he demanded was that she should be a dear innocent little girl, and that
role came easily. She smiled and blushed and saw that there was a
difference in his eyes when he greeted her from the look he bent on the
other two ladies. It was balm to her spirit to think that this man, who
admired her, was himself admired by the people whom she suspected of
despising her; and that they did admire him was evident. They were
hardly seated at d