se of friendship, having small conception of it or desire for it
beyond that surface politeness which enables people whose selfish
interests lie in the same direction to get on comfortably together.

She divided them into two classes. There were those who, like herself,
kept up great establishments and entertained lavishly and engaged in
the courteous but fierce rivalry of fashionable ostentation. Then
there were those who hung about the courts of the rich, invited because
they filled in the large backgrounds and contributed conversation or
ideas for new amusements, accepting because they loved the atmosphere
of luxury which they could not afford to create for themselves.

Leonora was undeniably in the latter class. But she was associated in
Pauline's mind with the period before her splendor. She had been
friendly when Dumont was unknown beyond Saint X. The others sought
her--well, for the same reasons of desire for distraction and dread of
boredom which made her welcome them. But Leonora, she more than half
believed, liked her to a certain extent for herself--"likes me better
than I like her." And at times she was self-reproachful for being thus
exceeded in self-giving. Leonora, for example, told her her most
intimate secrets, some of them far from creditable to her. Pauline
told nothing in return. She sometimes longed for a confidant, or,
rather, for some person who would understand without being told, some
one like Olivia; but her imagination refused to picture Leonora as that
kind of friend. Even more pronounced than her frankness, and she was
frank to her own hurt, was her biting cynicism--it was undeniably
amusing; it did not exactly inspire distrust, but it put Pauline
vaguely on guard. Also, she was candidly mercenary, and, in some
moods, rapaciously envious. "But no worse," thought Pauline, "than so
many of the others here, once one gets below their surface. Besides,
it's in a good-natured, good-hearted way."

She wished Fanshaw were as rich as Leonora longed for him to be. She
was glad Dumont seemed to be putting him in the way of making a
fortune. He was distasteful to her, because she saw that he was an
ill-tempered sycophant under a pretense of manliness thick enough to
shield him from the unobservant eyes of a world of men and women greedy
of flattery and busy each with himself or herself. But for Leonora's
sake she invited him. And Leonora was appreciative, was witty, never
monotonous or co