ich Mrs. Slade resented. She considered that it should be worn by a
woman of her own size and impressiveness. That was a little wrap of
ermine. Now ermine, as everybody knew, should only be worn by large
and queenly women. Mrs. Slade resolved that she herself would have an
ermine wrap which should completely outshine Mrs. Edes' little
affair, all swinging with tails and radiant with tiny, bright-eyed
heads.

Mrs. Edes announced a duet by Miss MacDonald and Mrs. Wells, and sat
down, and again the perfume of rose leaves was perceptible. Karl von
Rosen glanced at the next performers, Miss MacDonald, who was very
pretty and well-dressed in white embroidered cloth, and Mrs. Wells,
who was not pretty, but was considered very striking, who trailed
after her in green folds edged with fur, and bore a roll of music.
She seated herself at the piano with a graceful sweep of her green
draperies, which defined her small hips, and struck the keys with
slender fingers quite destitute of rings, always lifting them high
with a palpable affectation not exactly doubtful--that was saying too
much--but she was considered to reach limits of propriety with her
sinuous motions, the touch of her sensitive fingers upon piano keys,
and the quick flash of her dark eyes in her really plain face. There
was, for the women in Fairbridge, a certain mischievous fascination
about Mrs. Wells. Moreover, they had in her their one object of
covert gossip, their one stimulus to unlawful imagination.

There was a young man who played the violin. His name was Henry
Wheaton, and he was said to be a frequent caller at Mrs. Wells', and
she played his accompaniments, and Mr. Wells was often detained in
New York until the late train. Then there was another young man who
played the 'cello, and he called often. And there was Ellis
Bainbridge, who had a fine tenor voice, and he called. It was
delightful to have a woman of that sort, of whom nothing distinctly
culpable could be affirmed, against whom no good reason could be
brought for excluding her from the Zenith Club and the social set. In
their midst, Mrs. Wells furnished the condiments, the spice, and
pepper, and mustard for many functions. She relieved to a great
extent the monotony of unquestioned propriety. It would have been
horribly dull if there had been no woman in the Zenith Club who
furnished an excuse for the other members' gossip.

Leila MacDonald, so carefully dressed and brushed and washed, and so
f