hopeful. Everything was ahead of me. There was a splendid chance for
happiness.

"I can't marry Breck Sewall, Edith," I attempted at last. "I can't marry
any one--yet."

"And what do you intend to do with yourself?" she inquired in that cold,
unsympathetic way she assumes when she is angry.

"I don't know, yet. There's a chance for all sorts of good things to
come true," I replied lightly.

"You've been out three years, you know," she reminded me icily.

The Sewalls occupied their English estate for several seasons. Grassmere
remained closed and barred. I did not see my young millionaire again
until I was an older girl, and my ideals had undergone extensive
alterations.

CHAPTER IV

A BACK-SEASON DEBUTANTE

Debutantes are a good deal like first novels--advertised and introduced
at a great expenditure of money and effort, and presented to the public
with fear and trembling. But the greatest likeness comes later. The
best-sellers of one spring must be put up on the high shelves to make
room for new merchandise the next. At the end of several years the once
besought and discussed book can be found by the dozens on bargain
counters in department stores, marked down to fifty cents a copy.

The first best-seller I happened to observe in this ignominious position
was a novel that came out the same fall that I did. It was six years old
to the world, and so was I. I stopped a moment at the counter and opened
the book. It had been strikingly popular, with scores of reviews and
press notices, and hundreds of admirers. It had made a pretty little
pile of money for its exploiters. Perhaps, too, it had won a few
friends. But its day of intoxicating popularity had passed. And so had
mine. And so must every debutante's. By the fourth or fifth season,
cards for occasional luncheons and invitations to fill in vacancies at
married people's dinner parties must take the place of those feverish
all-night balls, preceded by brilliantly lighted tables-full of
debutantes, as excited as yourself, with a lot of gay young lords for
partners and all the older people looking on, admiring and taking mental
notes. Such excitement was all over with me by the time I was
twenty-two. I had been a success, too, I suppose. Any girl whom
Breckenridge Sewall had launched couldn't help being a success.

During the two or three years that Breck was in Europe I passed through
the usual routine of back-season debutantes. They always resort to