don't know that I
shall succeed with my friend, but for the sake of the cause I am willing
to try. I won't tell you anything about it till I try. If I fail, I
fail, but for the present leave all to me."

Mrs. Frankland was not the sort of person to relish being guided by
another, but in Mrs. Hilbrough she had met her superior in leadership.
Reluctantly she felt herself obliged to hand over the helm of her own
craft, holding herself ready to disembark at length wherever Mrs.
Hilbrough might reach dry ground.

Of all that Mrs. Hilbrough had won in her first winter's social
campaign, the achievement that gave her most pleasure was the making
acquaintance and entering into fast ripening friendship with Mrs. Van
Horne. Little Mrs. Van Horne was not in herself very desirable as a
friend, but she was one of those whose fortune it is to have the toil of
thousands at their disposal. Her magnificence was fed by an army:
innumerable laborers with spades and shovels, picks and blasting-drills,
working in smoke and dripping darkness to bore railway paths through
mountain chains; grimy stokers and clear-sighted engineers; brakemen
dripping in the chilly rain; switchmen watching out the weary night by
dim lanterns or flickering torches; desk-worn clerks and methodical
ticket-sellers; civil engineers using brains and long training over
their profiles and cross-sectionings; and scores of able "captains of
industry," such as superintendents, passenger agents, and traffic
managers--all these, and others, by their steady toil kept an unfailing
cataract of wealth pouring into the Van Horne coffers. In herself Mrs.
Van Horne had not half the force of Mrs. Hilbrough, but as the queen bee
of this widespread toil and traffic, fed and clad and decked as she was
by the fruits of the labor of a hundred thousand men, Mrs. Van Horne had
an enormous factitious value in the world. How to bear her dignity as
the wife of a man who used the million as a unit she did not know, for
though she affected a reserved stateliness of manner, it did not set
well on such a round-faced, impressionable little woman quite incapable
of charting a course for herself. No show of leadership had been hers,
but she had taken her cue from this and that stronger nature, until by
chance she came in hailing distance of Mrs. Hilbrough. The two were
perfect counterparts. Mrs. Hilbrough was clairvoyant and of prompt
decision, but she lacked the commanding position for personal