ight Set herself, and after trouble enough to give an ordinary
woman nervous prostration. That kind of thing _does_ give it to a lot
of women--especially if they fail. But Cousin Katherine very seldom
fails. She almost always carries things through. If you knew anything
about America in general, and New York in particular, you'd be able to
realise what a hard time she's had, when I tell you that till her
husband died she lived west of Chicago. To get into the Four Hundred if
you've lived west of Chicago, (unless you're Californian, which is
getting to be fashionable), is just like having to climb over one of
those great, high walls of yours in England, bristling with nails or
broken glass."

"My goodness!" I exclaimed. "How funny! Fancy if people who live in
Surrey should glare at people who live in Devonshire."

"That's different. You see, Chicago is _new_."

"But so is all America, isn't it?" I asked, stupidly. "What difference
can a hundred or so years make?"

"We haven't begun to think in centuries yet, on our side of the water,
my deah." (She has the most delicious way of saying "my deah," and all
her "r's" are soft like that; only it's too much trouble to write them
for nobody but myself to see.) "Anyhow, it _is_ so, between New York
and Chicago people--that is, the people who count in Society with a big
S: and it was a great triumph for my cousin to become the
Three-Hundred-and-Ninety-Ninth in the Four Hundred. She did it by
buying a Russian Prince."

"_Buying_ a----"

"Yes, love, he was going to the highest bidder, and she bought him.
That is, she entertained him so gorgeously and did so many nice things
for him, that he posed as her property; and as everyone was dying to
meet him, it _made_ her. She'd been working killingly hard before that,
for a whole year after taking her house on Fifth Avenue and building
her cottage at Newport, but it was buying the Prince which did the
trick. On the strength of that episode and its consequences, she went
to Europe with very nice introductions, and as you know, deah, she has
made some valuable as well as pleasant friends. To live up to them and
her reputation, she will have to be busy for a while dropping a lot of
old acquaintances."

"How horrid!" I couldn't help exclaiming, though Mrs. Ess Kay was going
to be my hostess.

"Yes, it seems rather miserable to me, because I'm a weak, lazy,
Southern thing, who would be right down sick, if I had to hurt any
human be