lost save honours." The
forthcoming Honours List had duly proclaimed the fact that Conrad Dort,
Esquire, had entered Parliament by another door as Baron Shalem, of
Wireskiln, in the county of Suffolk. Success had crowned the lady's
efforts as far as the achievement of the title went, but her social
ambitions seemed unlikely to make further headway. The new Baron and his
wife, their title and money notwithstanding, did not "go down" in their
particular segment of county society, and in London there were other
titles and incomes to compete with. People were willing to worship the
Golden Calf, but allowed themselves a choice of altars. No one could
justly say that the Shalems were either oppressively vulgar or
insufferably bumptious; probably the chief reason for their lack of
popularity was their intense and obvious desire to be popular. They kept
open house in such an insistently open manner that they created a social
draught. The people who accepted their invitations for the second or
third time were not the sort of people whose names gave importance to a
dinner party or a house gathering. Failure, in a thinly-disguised form,
attended the assiduous efforts of the Shalems to play a leading role in
the world that they had climbed into. The Baron began to observe to his
acquaintances that "gadding about" and entertaining on a big scale was
not much in his line; a quiet after-dinner pipe and talk with some
brother legislator was his ideal way of spending an evening.

Then came the great catastrophe, involving the old order of society in
the national overthrow. Lady Shalem, after a decent interval of
patriotic mourning, began to look around her and take stock of her
chances and opportunities under the new regime. It was easier to achieve
distinction as a titled oasis in the social desert that London had become
than it had been to obtain recognition as a new growth in a rather
overcrowded field. The observant eyes and agile brain quickly noted this
circumstance, and her ladyship set to work to adapt herself to the
altered conditions that governed her world. Lord Shalem was one of the
few Peers who kissed the hand of the new Sovereign, his wife was one of
the few hostesses who attempted to throw a semblance of gaiety and lavish
elegance over the travesty of a London season following the year of
disaster. The world of tradesmen and purveyors and caterers, and the
thousands who were dependent on them for employment