n it took
a whole afternoon to leave your cards. And then there were invitations
to be sent and accepted; and one was always making mistakes and
offending somebody--people would become mortal enemies overnight, and
expect all the world to know it the next morning. And now there were so
many divorces and remarryings, with consequent changing of names; and
some men knew about their wives' lovers and didn't care, and some did
care, but didn't know--altogether it was like carrying a dozen chess
games in your head. And then there was the hairdresser and the
manicurist and the masseuse, and the tailor and the bootmaker and the
jeweller; and then one absolutely had to glance through a newspaper,
and to see one's children now and then.

All this Mrs. Robbie explained at luncheon; it was the rich man's
burden, about which common people had no conception whatever. A person
with a lot of money was like a barrel of molasses--all the flies in the
neighbourhood came buzzing about. It was perfectly incredible, the
lengths to which people would go to get invited to your house; not only
would they write and beg you, they might attack your business
interests, and even bribe your friends. And on the other hand, when
people thought you needed them, the time you had to get them to come!
"Fancy," said Mrs. Robbie, "offering to give a dinner to an English
countess, and having her try to charge you for coming!" And incredible
as it might seem, some people had actually yielded to her, and the
disgusting creature had played the social celebrity for a whole season,
and made quite a handsome income out of it. There seemed to be no limit
to the abjectness of some of the tuft-hunters in Society.

It was instructive to hear Mrs. Robbie denounce such evils; and
yet--alas for human frailty--the next time that Montague called, the
great lady was blazing with wrath over the tidings that a new foreign
prince was coming to America, and that Mrs. Ridgely-Clieveden had
stolen a march upon her and grabbed him. He was to be under her
tutelage the entire time, and all the effulgence of his magnificence
would be radiated upon that upstart house. Mrs. Robbie revenged herself
by saying as many disagreeable things about Mrs. Ridgley-Clieveden as
she could think of; winding up with the declaration that if she behaved
with this prince as she had with the Russian grand duke, Mrs. Robbie
Walling, for one, would cut her dead. And truly the details which Mrs.
Robbie ci