ife's position, supported by a million in the
funds and another in Chicago, would be one of the most brilliant in
England. And she too had seen Lord Zeal in Piccadilly on Saturday.

XIX

The sudden elevation of her Jack to a marquisate, beside whose roots,
gripping the foundations of Britain's aristocracy, and ramifying the
length and breadth of its society, the lost dukedom was a mere mushroom,
created for a favorite of the last George, and notorious for its
_mesalliances_, did not cost Mrs. Kaye a moment's loss of poise. She
merely wondered that she had ever questioned her star. People that
disliked her found a subtle suggestion of arrogance in her manner, and
the slight significant smile on her large firm lips was a trifle more
stereotyped. Those that she favored with the abundance of her offerings
remembered afterwards that she had never been so brilliant as during the
month that followed the announcement of her bethrothal, and attributed
the fact to the electrified springs of affection.

Gwynne and she had been invited to the same houses for the rest of the
autumn, but he cancelled his engagements while begging her to fulfil
hers, as he should be too busy to entertain her were she so sweet as to
insist upon coming to Capheaton. This she had not the least intention of
doing, for she not only yearned for the additional tribute due to her,
but she always avoided long sojourns in Lady Victoria's vicinity,
knowing her as a woman of caprice, who often dropped people as abruptly
as she took them up. Susceptible to the charm of novelty, so far Mrs.
Kaye had wholly pleased her; but the clever Julia gauged the depths of
her future mother-in-law's credulity and kept her distance. With all her
reason for self-gratulation, in the depths of her cynical soul she was
quite aware of her natural inferiority to the women she emulated in all
but their license. That prerogative, with the wisdom that had marked her
upward course, she had flagrantly avoided, knowing that the world is
complacent only to those that fire its snobbishness, never to those that
fan the flame; and while she bitterly envied these women, she never
forgot the market value of her own unimpeachable virtue. She could not
in any case have been the slave of her passions, but her serenity was
sometimes ruffled as she reflected that, in spite of eminence achieved,
her caution in this and in other respects branded her in her secret soul
as second rate.

But if