think as much of
themselves as your aristocracy does--and mighty little of each other."

"I could understand an aristocracy of brains, in a land like America,"
I went on, quite fiercely, "but it's no good breaking off from the old
country at all if you're to hamper yourselves with anything else. Now
if I hadn't heard Mrs. Stuyvesant-Knox and Mrs. Van der Windt talking,
I should have supposed that in America a man like Mr. Brett, for
instance, could be received _anywhere_. As it is, I suppose--no, nobody
could despise him. For myself, I'm _proud_ to know such a brave man.
But--but of course we're not likely to meet him again, are we?"

"In Society?" laughed Sally. "Poor fellow, it doesn't look much like it
now, does it? Though I believe he's a man in a thousand, and worth six
of any of those that Cousin Katherine will let you know--counting
Potter, though he _is_ my relative."

"It seems a pity," I said, with a sigh for the mistakes of the whole
world--or something.

"What's a pity?"

"Oh, I hardly know. Everything. Isn't it?"

"Yes. And I'm sure that's what our poor, handsome friend is thinking."

"Do you suppose he--minds?"

"I reckon he would like to go on being acquainted with you, Betty, and
have the chances of other men. You're not an unattractive girl, you
know--or maybe you don't know. And he's human. I have a sort of idea
he'll try and make some change in his way of life, so that it may be
possible to meet you again."

When Sally said this, I had the oddest sensation, like a prickling in
all my veins. I longed to ask her if she were joking, or if she really
did think that Jim Brett was enough interested in me to take so much
trouble. But the words came only as far as the tip of my tongue, and
stuck to it as if they had been glued there.

VII

ABOUT SKY-SCRAPERS AND BEAUTIFUL LADIES

In the afternoon Mrs. Ess Kay and I in our thinnest muslins went out in
the motor. We whizzed up Fifth Avenue for several "blocks" (as she
called them), turned into an expensive-looking side street and stopped
before one of the most enormous buildings I ever saw in my life. It
seemed only half finished, for the steel columns of its skeleton were
still visible around the ground floor and the street before it was
still cluttered with bricks and boards and rubbish. In the hallway men
were working like active animals in an immense cage. Suddenly from
amongst them I saw emerge a beautifully dressed little girl foam