ack of balls or excess of divorces. She had a special
memory for the vicissitudes of the "new people" who rose to the surface
with each recurring tide, and were either submerged beneath its rush or
landed triumphantly beyond the reach of envious breakers; and she was apt
to display a remarkable retrospective insight into their ultimate fate,
so that, when they had fulfilled their destiny, she was almost always
able to say to Grace Stepney--the recipient of her prophecies--that she
had known exactly what would happen.

This particular season Mrs. Peniston would have characterized as that in
which everybody "felt poor" except the Welly Brys and Mr. Simon Rosedale.
It had been a bad autumn in Wall Street, where prices fell in accordance
with that peculiar law which proves railway stocks and bales of cotton to
be more sensitive to the allotment of executive power than many estimable
citizens trained to all the advantages of self-government. Even fortunes
supposed to be independent of the market either betrayed a secret
dependence on it, or suffered from a sympathetic affection: fashion
sulked in its country houses, or came to town incognito, general
entertainments were discountenanced, and informality and short dinners
became the fashion.

But society, amused for a while at playing Cinderella, soon wearied of
the hearthside role, and welcomed the Fairy Godmother in the shape of any
magician powerful enough to turn the shrunken pumpkin back again into the
golden coach. The mere fact of growing richer at a time when most
people's investments are shrinking, is calculated to attract envious
attention; and according to Wall Street rumours, Welly Bry and Rosedale
had found the secret of performing this miracle.

Rosedale, in particular, was said to have doubled his fortune, and there
was talk of his buying the newly-finished house of one of the victims of
the crash, who, in the space of twelve short months, had made the same
number of millions, built a house in Fifth Avenue, filled a
picture-gallery with old masters, entertained all New York in it, and
been smuggled out of the country between a trained nurse and a doctor,
while his creditors mounted guard over the old masters, and his guests
explained to each other that they had dined with him only because they
wanted to see the pictures. Mr. Rosedale meant to have a less meteoric
career. He knew he should have to go slowly, and the instincts of his
race fitted him to suffer re