to let sleeping dogs lie. Many a time in the past two years she had
looked forward to cutting them all as dead as they had cut her during
that unfortunate period. But once among them, and finding them
willing, nay, anxious, to forget that they had ever harbored unjust
thoughts of her, she took their proffered friendship at its face value.
It was quite gratifying to know that many of them envied her. She
learned from various sources that Bill's fortune loomed big, had grown
by some mysterious process of Granville tattle, until it had reached
the charmed six figures of convention.

That in itself was sufficient to establish their prestige. In a
society that lived by and for the dollar, and measured most things with
its dollar yardstick, that murmured item opened--indeed, forced
open--many doors to herself and her husband which would otherwise have
remained rigid on their fastenings. It was pleasant to be sought out
and made much of, and it pleased her to think that some of her quondam
friends were genuinely sorry that they had once stood aloof. They
attempted to atone, it would seem. For three weeks they lived in an
atmosphere of teas and dinners and theater parties, a giddy little
whirl that grew daily more attractive, so far as Hazel was concerned.

There had been changes. Jack Barrow had consoled himself with a bride.
Moreover, he was making good, in the popular phrase, at the real-estate
game. The Marshes, as she had previously known them, had been
tottering on the edge of shabby gentility. But they had come into
money. And as Bill slangily put it, they were using their pile to cut
a lot of social ice. Kitty Brooks' husband was now the head of the
biggest advertising agency in Granville. Hazel was glad of that mild
success. Kitty Brooks was the one person for whom she had always kept
a warm corner in her heart. Kitty had stood stoutly and unequivocally
by her when all the others had viewed her with a dubious eye. Aside
from these there were scores of young people who revolved in their same
old orbits. Two years will upon occasion make profound changes in some
lives, and leave others untouched. But change or no change, she found
herself caught up and carried along on a pleasant tide.

She was inordinately proud of Bill, when she compared him with the
average Granville male--yet she found herself wishing he would adopt a
little more readily the Granville viewpoint. He fell short of it, or
went beyo