t even here the cloven hoof intruded.

Norma had always imagined this group as being full of friendly women and
admiring men, as offering her a hundred friendships where the old life
had offered one. She discovered slowly, and with pained surprise, that
although there were plenty of girls, they were not especially anxious
for intimacy with her, and that the men she met were not, somehow,
"real." They were absorbed in amusement, polo and yachting, they moved
about a great deal, and they neither had, nor desired to have, any
genuine work or interest in life. She began to see Leslie's wisdom in
making an early and suitable marriage. As a matron, Leslie was
established; she could entertain, she had dignified duties and
interests, and while Norma felt awkward and bashful in asking young men
to dine with Aunt Marianna, Acton brought his friends to his home, and
Leslie had her girl friends there, and the whole thing was infinitely
simpler and pleasanter.

CHAPTER XI

Norma had indeed chanced to make one girl friend, and one of whom Leslie
and Alice, and even Annie, heartily approved. Caroline, the
seventeen-year-old daughter of the Peter Craigies, was not a debutante
yet, but she would be the most prominent, because the richest, of them
all next winter. Caroline was a heavy-lidded, slow-witted girl, whose
chief companions in life had been servants, foreign-born governesses,
and music-masters. Norma had been seated next to her at the
international tennis tournament, and had befriended the squirming and
bashful Caroline from sheer goodness of heart. They had criticized the
players, and Caroline had laughed the almost hysteric, shaken laugh that
so worried her mother, and had blurted confidences to Norma in her
childish way.

The next day there had been an invitation for Norma to lunch with
Caroline, and Mrs. von Behrens had promptly given another luncheon for
both girls. Norma was pleased, for a few weeks, with her first social
conquest, but after that Caroline became a dead weight upon her. She
hated the flattery, the inanities, the utter dulness of the great
Craigie mansion, and she began to have a restless conviction that time
spent with Caroline was time lost.

The friendship had cost her dear, too. Norma hated, even months later to
remember just what she had paid for it.

In August a letter from Rose had reached her at Newport, announcing
Rose's approaching marriage. Harry Redding's sister Mary was engaged to