him, her future viewpoint was
definitely fixed for her.

"If you take my advice," commented Mrs. Merrill, finally, "the less you
have to do with these friends of yours the better. I know all about
them. You might have seen that from the first. They can never be
accepted."

Mrs. Merrill did not trouble to explain why, but Mrs. Simms through her
husband soon learned the whole truth, and she was righteously indignant
and even terrified. Who was to blame for this sort of thing, anyhow?
she thought. Who had introduced them? The Addisons, of course. But
the Addisons were socially unassailable, if not all-powerful, and so
the best had to be made of that. But the Cowperwoods could be dropped
from the lists of herself and her friends instantly, and that was now
done. A sudden slump in their social significance began to manifest
itself, though not so swiftly but what for the time being it was
slightly deceptive.

The first evidence of change which Aileen observed was when the
customary cards and invitations for receptions and the like, which had
come to them quite freely of late, began to decline sharply in number,
and when the guests to her own Wednesday afternoons, which rather
prematurely she had ventured to establish, became a mere negligible
handful. At first she could not understand this, not being willing to
believe that, following so soon upon her apparent triumph as a hostess
in her own home, there could be so marked a decline in her local
importance. Of a possible seventy-five or fifty who might have called
or left cards, within three weeks after the housewarming only twenty
responded. A week later it had declined to ten, and within five weeks,
all told, there was scarcely a caller. It is true that a very few of
the unimportant--those who had looked to her for influence and the
self-protecting Taylor Lord and Kent McKibben, who were commercially
obligated to Cowperwood--were still faithful, but they were really
worse than nothing. Aileen was beside herself with disappointment,
opposition, chagrin, shame. There are many natures, rhinoceros-bided
and iron-souled, who can endure almost any rebuff in the hope of
eventual victory, who are almost too thick-skinned to suffer, but hers
was not one of these. Already, in spite of her original daring in
regard to the opinion of society and the rights of the former Mrs.
Cowperwood, she was sensitive on the score of her future and what her
past might mean to her.