bent on penetrating to the inner
Paradise from which she was now excluded; but once or twice, when nothing
better offered, he had turned up for a Sunday, and on these occasions he
had left her in no doubt as to his view of her situation. That he still
admired her was, more than ever, offensively evident; for in the Gormer
circle, where he expanded as in his native element, there were no
puzzling conventions to check the full expression of his approval. But it
was in the quality of his admiration that she read his shrewd estimate of
her case. He enjoyed letting the Gormers see that he had known "Miss
Lily"--she was "Miss Lily" to him now--before they had had the faintest
social existence: enjoyed more especially impressing Paul Morpeth with
the distance to which their intimacy dated back. But he let it be felt
that that intimacy was a mere ripple on the surface of a rushing social
current, the kind of relaxation which a man of large interests and
manifold preoccupations permits himself in his hours of ease.

The necessity of accepting this view of their past relation, and of
meeting it in the key of pleasantry prevalent among her new friends, was
deeply humiliating to Lily. But she dared less than ever to quarrel with
Rosedale. She suspected that her rejection rankled among the most
unforgettable of his rebuffs, and the fact that he knew something of her
wretched transaction with Trenor, and was sure to put the basest
construction on it, seemed to place her hopelessly in his power. Yet at
Carry Fisher's suggestion a new hope had stirred in her. Much as she
disliked Rosedale, she no longer absolutely despised him. For he was
gradually attaining his object in life, and that, to Lily, was always
less despicable than to miss it. With the slow unalterable persistency
which she had always felt in him, he was making his way through the dense
mass of social antagonisms. Already his wealth, and the masterly use he
had made of it, were giving him an enviable prominence in the world of
affairs, and placing Wall Street under obligations which only Fifth
Avenue could repay. In response to these claims, his name began to figure
on municipal committees and charitable boards; he appeared at banquets to
distinguished strangers, and his candidacy at one of the fashionable
clubs was discussed with diminishing opposition. He had figured once or
twice at the Trenor dinners, and had learned to speak with just the right
note of disdain of the