made them, all instinctively turn. He came where he could watch his
money breed more money, and bring greater increase of its kind in an
hour of luck than the toil of hundreds of men could earn in a year. He
called it speculation, stocks, the Street; and his pride, his faith
in himself, mounted with his luck. He expected, when he had sated his
greed, to begin to spend, and he had formulated an intention to build
a great house, to add another to the palaces of the country-bred
millionaires who have come to adorn the great city. In the mean time he
made little account of the things that occupied his children, except
to fret at the ungrateful indifference of his son to the interests that
could alone make a man of him. He did not know whether his daughters
were in society or not; with people coming and going in the house he
would have supposed they must be so, no matter who the people were; in
some vague way he felt that he had hired society in Mrs. Mandel, at so
much a year. He never met a superior himself except now and then a man
of twenty or thirty millions to his one or two, and then he felt his
soul creep within him, without a sense of social inferiority; it was
a question of financial inferiority; and though Dryfoos's soul bowed
itself and crawled, it was with a gambler's admiration of wonderful
luck. Other men said these many-millioned millionaires were smart, and
got their money by sharp practices to which lesser men could not attain;
but Dryfoos believed that he could compass the same ends, by the same
means, with the same chances; he respected their money, not them.

When he now heard Mrs. Mandel and his daughters talking of that person,
whoever she was, that Mrs. Mandel seemed to think had honored his girls
by coming to see them, his curiosity was pricked as much as his pride
was galled.

"Well, anyway," said Mela, "I don't care whether Christine's goon' or
not; I am. And you got to go with me, Mrs. Mandel."

"Well, there's a little difficulty," said Mrs. Mandel, with her
unfailing dignity and politeness. "I haven't been asked, you know."

"Then what are we goun' to do?" demanded Mela, almost crossly. She was
physically too amiable, she felt too well corporeally, ever to be quite
cross. "She might 'a' knowed--well known--we couldn't 'a' come alone,
in New York. I don't see why, we couldn't. I don't call it much of an
invitation."

"I suppose she thought you could come with your mother," Mrs. Mandel
suggeste