njury.

"Would you receive her, aunt, if she called upon you?"

"She has horses and servants, and everything a woman of the world can
desire; but I should feel I was bowing the knee to Mammon were I to ask
her to my house. Yet such is the respect paid to money in these
degenerate days that many a one will court the society of a person like
that, who would think me or your cousin Godfrey unworthy of notice,
because we have no longer a tithe of the property the family once
possessed."

The lady forgot there is a Rimmon as well as a Mammon.

"God knows," she went on, "how that woman's husband made his money! But
that is a small matter nowadays, except to old-fashioned people like
myself. Not _how_ but _how much_, is all the question now," she
concluded, flattering herself she had made a good point.

"Don't think me rude, please, aunt: I am really wishing to
understand--but, if Mrs. Cropper is not a lady, how can Mary Marston
not be one? She is as different from Mrs. Croppor as one woman can be
from another."

"Because she has not the position in society," replied Mrs. Wardour,
enveloping her nothing in flimsy reiteration and self-contradiction.

"And Mrs. Cropper has the position?" ventured Letty, with a little
palpitation from fear of offending.

"Apparently so," answered Mrs. Wardour. But her inquiring pupil did not
feel much enlightened. Letty had not the logic necessary to the
thinking of the thing out; or to the discovery that, like most social
difficulties, hers was merely one of the upper strata of a question
whose foundation lies far too deep for what is called Society to
perceive its very existence. And hence it is no wonder that Society,
abetted by the Church, should go on from generation to generation
talking murderous platitudes about it.

But, although such was her reasoning beforehand, heart had so far
overcome habit and prejudice with Mrs. Wardour, that, convinced on the
first interview of the high tone and good influence of Mary, she had
gradually come to put herself in the way of seeing her as often as she
came, ostensibly to herself that she might prevent any deterioration of
intercourse; and although she always, on these occasions, played the
grand lady, with a stateliness that seemed to say, "Because of your
individual worth, I condescend, and make an exception, but you must not
imagine I receive your class at Thornwick," she had almost entirely
ceased making remarks upon the said class in Le