The Project Gutenberg eBook, Ladies Must Live , by Alice Duer Miller

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Title: Ladies Must Live

Author: Alice Duer Miller

Release Date: June 30, 2004 [eBook #12789]
[Date last updated: October 4, 2004]

Language: English

Character set encoding: US-ASCII

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LADIES MUST LIVE

by

ALICE DUER MILLER

Author of "Come Out of the Kitchen," etc.

1917

CHAPTER I

Mrs. Ussher was having a small house party in the country over New Year's
Day. This is equivalent to saying that the half dozen most fashionable
people in New York were out of town.

Certain human beings are admitted to have a genius for discrimination in
such matters as objects of art, pigs or stocks. Mrs. Ussher had this same
instinct in regard to fashion, especially where fashions in people were
concerned. She turned toward hidden social availability very much as the
douser's hazel wand turns toward the hidden spring. When she crossed the
room to speak to some woman after dinner, whatever that woman's social
position might formerly have been, you could be sure that at present she
was on the upward wing. When Mrs. Ussher discovered extraordinary
qualities of mind and sympathy in some hitherto impossible man, you might
be certain it was time to begin to book him in advance.

Not that Mrs. Ussher was a kingmaker; she herself had no more power over
the situation than the barometer has over the weather. She merely was
able to foretell; she had the sense of approaching social success.

She was unaware of her own powers, and really supposed that her sudden
and usually ephemeral friendships were based on mutual attraction. The
fact that for years her friends had been the small group of the
momentarily fashionable required, in her eyes, no explanation. So simple
was her creed that she believed people were fashionable for the same
reason that they were her friends, because "they were so nice."

During the short period of their existence, Mrs. Ussher gave to these
friendships the utmost loyalty and devotion. She agonized