rtunity for social success, she was a great favorite
in the diplomatic circle at Washington, and well known in the best
London set, and in the European capitals. She seems to be quite a
remarkable young woman, but you are all wrong about her money; she is
very far from rich. She--'"

Barry stopped short. Mrs. Apostleman cackled delightedly; no one else
stirred.

"'She got very little of Frothingham's money,'" Barry presently read
on, '"it came to him from his first wife, who was a widow with two
daughters when he married her. The money naturally reverted to her
girls, Mrs. Fred Senior and Mrs. Spencer Mack, both of this city.'"

"Ha! D'ye get that?" said Mrs. Apostleman. "Go on!"

"'Frothingham left his own daughter something considerably less than a
hundred thousand dollars,'" Barry presently resumed, "'not more than
seventy or eighty thousand, certainly. It is still invested in the
estate. It must pay her three or four thousand a year. And besides that
she has only Burgoyne's insurance, twenty or twenty-five thousand, for
those years of illness pretty well used up his own money. I believe the
stepsisters were very anxious to make her a more generous arrangement,
but she seems to have declined it. Alice says they are quite devoted--'"

"Alice don't count!" said the old lady "that's his wife. That's
enough." She stopped the reader and refolded the letter, her
mischievous eyes dancing. "Well, what d'ye think of that?" she demanded.

Barry's bewildered, "Well, I will be darned!" set loose a babel of
tongues. Mrs. Apostleman had not counted in vain upon a sensation;
everyone talked at once. Mrs. White's high, merry laugh dominated all
the other voices.

"So there is a very much better reason for this
simple-dinner-blue-gingham existence than we supposed," said the
President of the Santa Paloma Women's Club amusedly when the first rush
of comment died away. "I think that is quite delicious! While all of us
were feeling how superior she was not to get a motor, and not to
rebuild the Hall, she was simply living within her income, and making
the best of it!"

"I don't know that it makes her any less superior," Mrs. Carew said
thoughtfully. "It--it certainly makes her seem--NICER. I never
suspected her of--well, of preaching, exactly, but I have sometimes
thought that she really couldn't enter into our point of view, with all
that money! I think I'm going to like her more than ever!" she finished
laughingly.

"Why,