Some friends of Mrs. Brindley's who were going abroad offered her their
cottage on the New Jersey coast near Seabright, and a big new
touring-car and chauffeur. She and Mildred at once gave up the plan
for a summer in the Adirondacks, the more readily as several of the men
and women they saw the most of lived within easy distance of them at
Deal Beach and Elberon. When Mildred went shopping she was lured into
buying a lot of summer things she would not have needed in the
Adirondacks--a mere matter of two hundred and fifty dollars or
thereabouts. A little additional economy in the fall would soon make
up for such a trifle, and if there is one time more than another when a
woman wishes to look well and must look well, that time is
summer--especially by the sea.

When her monthly statement from the bank came on the first of July she
found that five thousand dollars had been deposited to her credit. She
was moved by this discovery to devote several hours--very depressed
hours they were--to her finances. She had spent a great deal more
money than she had thought; indeed, since March she had been living at
the rate of fifteen thousand a year. She tried to account for this
amazing extravagance. But she could recall no expenditure that was not
really almost, if not quite, necessary. It took a frightful lot of
money to live in New York. How DID people with small incomes manage to
get along? Whatever would have become of her if she had not had the
good luck to be able to borrow from Stanley? What would become of her
if, before she was succeeding on the stage, Stanley should die or lose
faith in her or interest in her? What would become of her! She had
been living these last few months among people who had wide-open eyes
and knew everything that was going on--and did some "going-on"
themselves, as she was now more than suspecting. There were many
women, thousands of them--among the attractive, costily dressed throngs
she saw in the carriages and autos and cabs--who would not like to have
it published how they contrived to live so luxuriously. No, they would
not like to have it published, though they cared not a fig for its
being whispered; New York too thoroughly understood how necessary
luxurious living was, and was too completely divested of the follies of
the old-fashioned, straight-laced morality, to mind little shabby
details of queer conduct in striving to keep up with the procession.
Even the married women, u