special provision for the head of the state, down
whose central aisle she marshalled Ludlow, and installed him in the
governor's pew.

CHAPTER III

Had the protest against Knickerbocker arrogance languished at this
pass, history would be the poorer, but Cora Shelby found it impossible
to stop with this show of independence. Her ambition was whetted for
an exercise of actual power, and the outcome was the famous battle of
Beverwyck, whose story still lacks its balladist.

Early in her survey of Albany society, Cora had met with the Beverwyck
Club.

"It is the local academy of immortals," instructed the military
secretary. "Its judgments may not be infallible, but they're beyond
appeal. It is the pink of exclusiveness; it worships etiquette above
all other gods; and its receptions to incoming governors demand the
reddest lettering in the calendar."

When Shelby's turn for this signal honor drew near, and the military
secretary, to whom Fortune, not content with sending him into the world
a grandson of Mrs. Teunis Van Dam, had added membership in the
Beverwyck Club, approached him to discuss preliminaries, the governor
cheerfully referred him to his wife in whose social knowingness he
placed an abounding trust. Of Albany other than as a legislative
workshop he knew next to nothing. His social progress in the salad
days of his first term in the Assembly had begun in a saloon behind the
capitol much frequented by departmental clerks, whence through hotel
corridor intercourse he evolved by his second session to a grillroom,
patronized by public servants of higher cast who gave stag dinners and
occasional theatre parties, which called for evening dress. Up to this
period Shelby had never found evening clothes essential to his
happiness. His little sectarian college had rather frowned on such
garments, and he, too, for a time had vaguely considered them
un-American. Yet, taught by the grillroom, he assumed this livery,
wore off its shyness, and grew to like it for the best it signified.
Here evolution paused. Mrs. Teunis Van Dam, Canon North, and the
Beverwyck Club, so far as they stood for anything, peopled a frigid
zone of inconsequence which he had no wish to penetrate. Washington,
influence in his party, and intimacy with its leaders sophisticated him
before his return; behind every mask he now discerned a human being;
and no social ordeal terrified. Nevertheless, something of his
old-time diffidence