Alice bowed before Mrs. Snyder and retreated to a window at the other side of the room.  She sat beside the window and looked out.  Just then one of the other liverymen drove up with a carriage full of ladies, and they emerged in a flutter of veils and silk skirts.  Mrs. Slade, who was really superb in her rose silk and black lace, with an artful frill of white lace at her throat to match her great puff of white hair, remained beside Mrs. Snyder, whose bow of mirth widened.

“Who is that magnificent creature?” whispered Mrs. Snyder with a gush of enthusiasm, indicating Alice beside the window.

“She lives here,” replied Mrs. Slade rather stupidly.  She did not quite know how to define Alice.

“Lives here in this little place?  Not all the year?” rejoined Mrs. Snyder.

“Fairbridge is a very good place to live in all the year,” replied Mrs. Slade rather stiffly.  “It is near New York.  We have all the advantages of a great metropolis without the drawbacks.  Fairbridge is a most charming city, and very progressive, yes, very progressive.”

Mrs. Slade took it rather hardly that Mrs. Snyder should intimate anything prejudicial to Fairbridge and especially that it was not good enough for Alice Mendon, who had been born there, and lived there all her life except the year she had been in college.  If anything, she, Mrs. Slade, wondered if Alice Mendon were good enough for Fairbridge.  What had she ever done, except to wear handsome costumes and look handsome and self-possessed?  Although she belonged to the Zenith Club, no power on earth could induce her to discharge the duties connected herewith, except to pay her part of the expenses, and open her house for a meeting.  She simply would not write a paper upon any interesting and instructive topic and read it before the club, and she was not considered gifted.  She could not sing like Leila MacDonald and Mrs. Arthur Wells.  She could not play like Mrs. Jack Evarts.  She could not recite like Sally Anderson.

Mrs. Snyder glanced across at Alice, who looked very graceful and handsome, although also, to a discerning eye, a little sulky, and bored with a curious, abstracted boredom.

“She is superb,” whispered Mrs. Snyder, “yes, simply superb.  Why does she live here, pray?”

“Why, she was born here,” replied Mrs. Slade, again stupidly.  It was as if Alice had no more motive power than a flowering bush.

Mrs. Snyder’s bow of mirth widened into a laugh.  “Well, can’t she get away, even if she was born here?” said she.

However, Mrs. George B. Slade’s mind travelled in such a circle that she was difficult to corner.  “Why should she want to move?” said she.

Mrs. Snyder laughed again.  “But, granting she should want to move, is there anything to hinder?” she asked.  She wasn’t a very clever woman, and was deciding privately to mimic Mrs. George B. Slade at some future occasion, and so eke out her scanty remuneration.  She did not think ten dollars and expenses quite enough for such a lecture as hers.