e for books, I had no resources outside
of my profession, and when I was not working on some legal problem I
dawdled over the newspapers and went to bed. I don't mean to imply that
our existence, outside of our continued intimacy with the Peterses and
the Blackwoods, was socially isolated. We gave little dinners that Maude
carried out with skill and taste; but it was I who suggested them; we
went out to other dinners, sometimes to Nancy's--though we saw less and
less of her--sometimes to other houses. But Maude had given evidence of
domestic tastes and a disinclination for gaiety that those who
entertained more were not slow to sense. I should have liked to take a
larger house, but I felt the futility of suggesting it; the children were
still small, and she was occupied with them. Meanwhile I beheld, and at
times with considerable irritation, the social world changing, growing
larger and more significant, a more important function of that higher
phase of American existence the new century seemed definitely to have
initiated. A segregative process was away to which Maude was wholly
indifferent. Our city was throwing off its social conservatism; wealth
(which implied ability and superiority) was playing a greater part,
entertainments were more luxurious, lines more strictly drawn. We had an
elaborate country club for those who could afford expensive amusements.
Much of this transformation had been due to the initiative and leadership
of Nancy Durrett....

Great and sudden wealth, however, if combined with obscure antecedents
and questionable qualifications, was still looked upon askance. In spite
of the fact that Adolf Scherer had "put us on the map," the family of the
great iron-master still remained outside of the social pale. He himself
might have entered had it not been for his wife, who was supposed to be
"queer," who remained at home in her house opposite Gallatin Park and
made little German cakes,--a huge house which an unknown architect had
taken unusual pains to make pretentious and hideous, for it was Rhenish,
Moorish and Victorian by turns. Its geometric grounds matched those of
the park, itself a monument to bad taste in landscape. The neighbourhood
was highly respectable, and inhabited by families of German extraction.
There were two flaxen-haired daughters who had just graduated from an
expensive boarding-school in New York, where they had received the polish
needful for future careers. But the careers were n