the
highest standard. The functions which these people provided were
stupid to the verge of distraction; really they were only the week-day
receptions and Sunday-afternoon calls of Squeedunk and Hohokus raised
to the Nth power. The purpose of the whole matter was to see and be
seen. Novelty in either thought or action was decidedly eschewed. It
was, as a matter of fact, customariness of thought and action and the
quintessence of convention that was desired. The idea of introducing a
"play actress," for instance, as was done occasionally in the East or
in London--never; even a singer or an artist was eyed askance. One
could easily go too far! But if a European prince should have strayed
to Chicago (which he never did) or if an Eastern social magnate chanced
to stay over a train or two, then the topmost circle of local wealth
was prepared to strain itself to the breaking-point. Cowperwood had
sensed all this on his arrival, but he fancied that if he became rich
and powerful enough he and Aileen, with their fine house to help them,
might well be the leaven which would lighten the whole lump.
Unfortunately, Aileen was too obviously on the qui vive for those
opportunities which might lead to social recognition and equality, if
not supremacy. Like the savage, unorganized for protection and at the
mercy of the horrific caprice of nature, she was almost tremulous at
times with thoughts of possible failure. Almost at once she had
recognized herself as unsuited temperamentally for association with
certain types of society women. The wife of Anson Merrill, the great
dry-goods prince, whom she saw in one of the down-town stores one day,
impressed her as much too cold and remote. Mrs. Merrill was a woman of
superior mood and education who found herself, in her own estimation,
hard put to it for suitable companionship in Chicago. She was
Eastern-bred-Boston--and familiar in an offhand way with the superior
world of London, which she had visited several times. Chicago at its
best was to her a sordid commercial mess. She preferred New York or
Washington, but she had to live here. Thus she patronized nearly all of
those with whom she condescended to associate, using an upward tilt of
the head, a tired droop of the eyelids, and a fine upward arching of
the brows to indicate how trite it all was.

It was a Mrs. Henry Huddlestone who had pointed out Mrs. Merrill to
Aileen. Mrs. Huddlestone was the wife of a soap manufacturer l