rown
into one, was now the objective. It glittered before her with a moving
throng; the air was full of the odor of flowers, and the sound of music
and voices.

"Mrs. Cowperwood," observed Bradford Canda to Horton Biggers, the
society editor, "is one of the prettiest women I have seen in a long
time. She's almost too pretty."

"How do you think she's taking?" queried the cautious Biggers.
"Charming, but she's hardly cold enough, I'm afraid; hardly clever
enough. It takes a more serious type. She's a little too
high-spirited. These old women would never want to get near her; she
makes them look too old. She'd do better if she were not so young and
so pretty."

"That's what I think exactly," said Biggers. As a matter of fact, he
did not think so at all; he had no power of drawing any such accurate
conclusions. But he believed it now, because Bradford Canda had said
it.

Chapter XI

The Fruits of Daring

Next morning, over the breakfast cups at the Norrie Simmses' and
elsewhere, the import of the Cowperwoods' social efforts was discussed
and the problem of their eventual acceptance or non-acceptance
carefully weighed.

"The trouble with Mrs. Cowperwood," observed Mrs. Simms, "is that she
is too gauche. The whole thing was much too showy. The idea of her
portrait at one end of the gallery and that Gerome at the other! And
then this item in the Press this morning! Why, you'd really think they
were in society." Mrs. Simms was already a little angry at having let
herself be used, as she now fancied she had been, by Taylor Lord and
Kent McKibben, both friends of hers.

"What did you think of the crowd?" asked Norrie, buttering a roll.

"Why, it wasn't representative at all, of course. We were the most
important people they had there, and I'm sorry now that we went. Who
are the Israelses and the Hoecksemas, anyhow? That dreadful woman!"
(She was referring to Mrs. Hoecksema.) "I never listened to duller
remarks in my life."

"I was talking to Haguenin of the Press in the afternoon," observed
Norrie. "He says that Cowperwood failed in Philadelphia before he came
here, and that there were a lot of lawsuits. Did you ever hear that?"

"No. But she says she knows the Drakes and the Walkers there. I've
been intending to ask Nellie about that. I have often wondered why he
should leave Philadelphia if he was getting along so well. People don't
usually do that."

Simms was envious already of the f