claimed; and to her murmur of "Ah, we do NOW," he retorted with a
sudden burst of violence: "I suppose it's because the letters are to HIM,
then? Well, I'll be damned if I see what thanks you've got from him!"

Chapter 8

The autumn days declined to winter. Once more the leisure world was in
transition between country and town, and Fifth Avenue, still deserted at
the week-end, showed from Monday to Friday a broadening stream of
carriages between house-fronts gradually restored to consciousness.

The Horse Show, some two weeks earlier, had produced a passing semblance
of reanimation, filling the theatres and restaurants with a human display
of the same costly and high-stepping kind as circled daily about its
ring. In Miss Bart's world the Horse Show, and the public it attracted,
had ostensibly come to be classed among the spectacles disdained of the
elect; but, as the feudal lord might sally forth to join in the dance on
his village green, so society, unofficially and incidentally, still
condescended to look in upon the scene. Mrs. Gormer, among the rest, was
not above seizing such an occasion for the display of herself and her
horses; and Lily was given one or two opportunities of appearing at her
friend's side in the most conspicuous box the house afforded. But this
lingering semblance of intimacy made her only the more conscious of a
change in the relation between Mattie and herself, of a dawning
discrimination, a gradually formed social standard, emerging from Mrs.
Gormer's chaotic view of life. It was inevitable that Lily herself should
constitute the first sacrifice to this new ideal, and she knew that, once
the Gormers were established in town, the whole drift of fashionable life
would facilitate Mattie's detachment from her. She had, in short, failed
to make herself indispensable; or rather, her attempt to do so had been
thwarted by an influence stronger than any she could exert. That
influence, in its last analysis, was simply the power of money: Bertha
Dorset's social credit was based on an impregnable bank-account.

Lily knew that Rosedale had overstated neither the difficulty of her own
position nor the completeness of the vindication he offered: once
Bertha's match in material resources, her superior gifts would make it
easy for her to dominate her adversary. An understanding of what such
domination would mean, and of the disadvantages accruing from her
rejection of it, was brought home to Lily with in