the papers next day as assisting at the
function--the cat!" she muttered savagely, as she laid aside her
revised list of social desirables.

But in preparing Carmen that summer for her subsequent entry into
polite society Mrs. Hawley-Crowles soon realized that she had
assumed a task of generous proportions. In the first place,
despite all efforts, the girl could not be brought to a proper
sense of money values. Her eyes were ever gaping in astonishment at
what Mrs. Hawley-Crowles and her sister regarded as the most moderate
of expenditures, and it was only when the Beaubien herself mildly
hinted to them that ingenuousness was one of the girl's greatest
social assets, that they learned to smile indulgently at her wonder,
even while inwardly pitying her dense ignorance and lack of
sophistication.

A second source of trial to her guardians was her delicate sense of
honor; and it was this that one day nearly sufficed to wreck their
standing with the fashionable Mrs. Gannette of Riverside Drive, a
pompous, bepowdered, curled and scented dame, anaemic of mind, but
tremendously aristocratic, and of scarcely inferior social dignity to
that of the envied Mrs. Ames. For, when Mrs. Gannette moved into the
neighborhood where dwelt the ambitious Mrs. Hawley-Crowles, the latter
was taken by a mutual acquaintance to call upon her, and was
immediately received into the worldly old lady's good graces. And it
so happened that, after the gay season had closed that summer, Mrs.
Gannette invited Mrs. Hawley-Crowles and her sister to an informal
afternoon of bridge, and especially requested that they bring their
young ward, whose beauty and wonderful story were, through the
discreet maneuvers of her guardians, beginning to be talked about. For
some weeks previously Mrs. Hawley-Crowles had been inducting Carmen
into the mysteries of the game; but with indifferent success, for the
girl's thoughts invariably were elsewhere engaged. On this particular
afternoon Carmen was lost in contemplation of the gorgeous dress, the
lavish display of jewelry, and the general inanity of conversation;
and her score was pitiably low. The following morning, to her great
astonishment, she received a bill from the practical Mrs. Gannette for
ten dollars to cover her losses at the game. For a long time the
bewildered girl mused over it. Then she called the chauffeur and
despatched him to the Gannette mansion with the money necessary to
meet the gambling debt, a