gh she made the most of it, it did not satisfy her. Her helplessness
angered her, and aroused her old feelings of suspicion and resentment
against the fashionable crew who appeared to be unaware of her
existence. She was glad to believe that the reason they ignored her was
because she was too serious minded and spiritual to suit their frivolous
and pleasure-loving tastes. Sometimes she reasoned that the sensible
thing for her to do was to break away from her present life, where
convention and caste trammelled her efforts, and make a name for herself
as an independent soul, like Mrs. Margaret Rodney Earle and other
free-born women of the Republic. With satisfaction she pictured herself
on the lecture platform uttering burning denunciation of the un-American
social proclivities of this shallow society, and initiating a crusade
which should sweep it from existence beneath the ban of the moral sense
of the thoughtful people of the country.

But more frequently she nursed her resentment against Mrs. Williams, to
whom she ascribed the blame of her isolation, reasoning that if Flossy
had been a true friend, not even Wilbur's waywardness would have
prevented her social recognition and success. That, instead, this
volatile, fickle prattler had used her so long as she needed her, and
then dropped her heartlessly. The memory of Flossy's ball still rankled
deeply, and appeared to Selma a more obvious and more exasperating
insult as the days passed without a sign of explanation on the part of
her late neighbor, and as her new projects languished for lack of a few
words of introduction here and there, which, in her opinion, were all
she needed to ensure her enthusiastic welcome as a social leader. The
appreciation that without those words of introduction she was helpless
for the time being focused her resentment, already keen, on the
successful Flossy, whose gay doings had disappeared from the public
prints in a blaze of glory with the advent of the Lenten season.
Refusing to acknowledge her dependence, Selma essayed several spasmodic
attempts to assert herself, but they proved unsatisfactory. She made the
most of Mr. Parsons's predilection for her society, which had not been
checked by Wilbur's termination of the contract. She was thus enabled to
affiliate with some of their new friends, but she was disagreeably
conscious that she was not making real progress, and that Mr. and Mrs.
Parsons and their daughter had, like herself, been d