alone, revolving in his mind his business
affairs--counting in fancy his big bundles of securities, one by one,
calculating their returns past, present and prospective--reviewing the
various enterprises in which he was dominant factor, working out
schemes for getting more profit here, for paying less wages there, for
tightening his grip upon this enterprise, for dumping his associates in
that, for escaping with all the valuable assets from another. His
appearance, as he and his nag dozed along the highroad, was as
deceptive as that of a hive of bees on a hot day--no signs of life
except a few sleepy workers crawling languidly in and out at the low,
broad crack-door, yet within myriads toiling like mad.

Jane went up to dress. She had brought an Italian maid with her from
Florence, and a mass of baggage that had given the station loungers at
Remsen City something to talk about, when there was a dearth of new
subjects, for the rest of their lives. She had transformed her own
suite in the second story of the big old house into an appearance of
the quarters of a twentieth century woman of wealth and leisure. In
the sitting room were books in four languages; on the walls were
tasteful reproductions of her favorite old masters. The excellence of
her education was attested not by the books and pictures but by the
absence of those fussy, commonplace draperies and bits of bric-a-brac
where--with people of no taste and no imagination furnish their houses
because they can think of nothing else to fill in the gaps.

Many of Jane's ways made Sister Martha uneasy. For Martha, while
admitting that Jane through superior opportunity ought to know, could
not believe that the "right sort" of people on the other side had
thrown over all her beloved formalities and were conducting themselves
distressingly like tenement-house people. For instance, Martha could
not approve Jane's habit of smoking cigarettes--a habit which, by one
of those curious freaks of character, enormously pleased her father.
But--except in one matter--Martha entirely approved Jane's style of
dress. She hastened to pronounce it "just too elegant" and repeated
that phrase until Jane, tried beyond endurance, warned her that the
word elegant was not used seriously by people of the "right sort" and
that its use was regarded as one of those small but subtle signs of the
loathsome "middle class."

The one thing in Jane's dress that Martha disapproved--or, rather,
shi