the
number and raised the standard of the domestics, and persuaded me to buy
a variety of horses and equipages. It was she who kept the grooms up to
the mark regarding the proper degree of polish for the harnesses, and
she spent many days in the selection of an artistic design for the
crest to be emblazoned upon them. So far as was possible she represented
that all these things were done at my desire and out of her sheer good
nature. When I drove with her from shop to shop, as I often did to save
myself from depressing thoughts, she invariably made me pass a formal
approval upon whatever charmed her eye. If this innocent self-deceit
gave her pleasure, it did not seem to me worth while to protest.

And so by the time I left off my mourning, there was little left to be
done to make my establishment one of the most elegant in the city. Aunt
Helen now turned her attention to my clothes. The costumes which I
suffered her to select were marvels of Parisian art and New York
adaptiveness. She sought too, by frequent allusions to my increased
personal beauty, to arouse my vanity and induce me to throw off the pall
of soberness that had settled upon my spirit. When this failed, she had
recourse to an opposite policy, and repeated to me the remarks she
overheard in coming out of church and elsewhere concerning me. Many of
my acquaintances, she said, were of the opinion that I was eccentric and
partial to "advanced" ideas. Another story current was that I had been
compelled by my father on his death-bed, on pain of disinheritance, to
dismiss a young artist to whom I was passionately attached. There was
the same grain of truth to a bushel of error in the remaining
conjectures; but Aunt Helen assured me that every one agreed I was
peculiar, and deemed it unfortunate that a young lady possessed of such
signal advantages should be different from all the rest of the world.
Even I, unobservant as I was at this time, was made aware by the curious
glances directed at me as I descended from my carriage, that to a
certain extent an heiress belongs to the public.

Continual dropping, however, will wear away the hardest stone, and Aunt
Helen was not one to weary in what she considered well-doing. When
nearly three years had elapsed after my father's death, I yielded to her
urgency and consented to inaugurate my return to society by giving a
large ball. The idea came to me one night when I was feeling depressed
and discouraged over my failure