--and
the fact that no one had sought her out and offered her the honor as a
fitting recognition of her due was secretly mortifying. The Benham
Institute had been prompt to acknowledge her presence by giving a
reception in her honor, at which she was able to recite once more, "Oh,
why should the Spirit of Mortal be proud?" with old-time success, and
she had been informed by Mrs. Earle that she was likely to be chosen one
of the Vice-Presidents at the annual meeting. But these Reform Club
people had not even done her the courtesy to ask her to join them or
consider their opinions. She would have spurned the invitation with
contempt, but it piqued her not to know more about them; it distressed
her to think that there should exist in Benham an exclusive set which
professed to be ethically and intellectually superior and did not
include her, for she had come to Benham with the intention of leading
such a movement, to the detriment of fashion and frivolity. With Mr.
Parsons's money at her back, she was serenely confident that the houses
of the magnates of Benham--the people who corresponded in her mind's eye
to the dwellers on Fifth Avenue--would open to her. Already there had
been flattering indications that she would be able to command attention
there. She had expected to find this so; her heart would have been
broken to find it otherwise. Still, her hope in shaking the dust of New
York from her feet had been to find in Benham an equally admirable and
satisfactory atmosphere in regard to mental and moral progress. She had
come just in time, it is true, to utter her vehement protest against
this exclusive, aristocratic movement--this arrogant affectation of
superiority, and to array herself in battle line against it, resolved to
give herself up with enthusiasm to its annihilation. Yet the sight of
the college buildings for the higher education of women, rising without
her furtherance and supervision, and under the direction of these
people, made her sad and gave her a feeling of disappointment. Why had
they been permitted to obtain this foothold? Someone had been lacking in
vigilance and foresight. Thank heaven, with her return and a strong,
popular spirit like Mr. Lyons in the lead, these unsympathetic,
so-called reformers would speedily be confounded, and the intellectual
air of Benham restored to its original purity.

One afternoon while Selma's gaze happened to be directed toward the
embryo college walls, and she was in