nother class; and there
is a great deal of wondering (deservedly) over what was ever found
attractive in it. The nobler ocean beaches, grand mountains, and
bounteous springs will always be, must always be, popular; it is
Nature's ironical method, perhaps, of forcing the would-be exclusives to
content themselves with her second best, after all.

Caryl's, now at the height of its transient fame, was merely a quiet
nook in the green country, with no more attractions than a hundred
others; but the old piazza was paced by the little high-heeled shoes of
fashionable women, the uneven floors swept by their trailing skirts.
French maids and little bare-legged children sported in the
old-fashioned garden, and young men made up their shooting parties in
the bare office, and danced in the evening--yes, really danced, not
leaving it superciliously to the boys--in the rackety bowling-alley,
which, refloored, did duty as a ball-room. There was a certain woody,
uncloying flavor about Caryl's (so it was asserted), which could not
exist amid the gilding of Saratoga. All this Miss Vanhorn related to her
niece on the day of their arrival. "I do not expect you to understand
it," she said; "but pray make no comment; ask no question. Accept
everything, and then you will pass."

Aunt and niece had spent a few days in New York, _en route_. The old
lady was eccentric about her own attire; she knew that she could afford
to be eccentric. But for her niece she purchased a sufficient although
simple supply of summer costumes, so that the young girl made her
appearance among the others without attracting especial attention.
Helen was not there; no one identified Miss Douglas as the _rara avis_
of her fantastic narrations. And there was no surface sparkle about
Anne, none of the usual girlish wish to attract attention, which makes
the eyes brighten, the color rise, and the breath quicken when entering
a new circle.

That old woman of the world, Katharine Vanhorn, took no step to attract
notice to her niece. She knew that Anne's beauty was of the kind that
could afford to wait; people would discover it for themselves. Anne
remained, therefore, quietly by her side through several days, while
she, not unwilling at heart to have so fresh a listener, talked on and
instructed her. Miss Vanhorn was not naturally brilliant, but she was
one of those society women who, in the course of years of fashionable
life, have selected and retained for their own use