not she, had been instrumental in securing her valuable services.  Mrs. Edes had a Napoleonic ambition which was tragic and pathetic, because it could command only a narrow scope for its really unusual force.  If Mrs. Edes had only been possessed of the opportunity to subjugate Europe, nothing except another Waterloo could have stopped her onward march.  But she had absolutely nothing to subjugate except poor little Fairbridge.  She was a woman of power which was wasted.  She was absurdly tragic, but none the less tragic.  Power spent upon petty ends is one of the greatest disasters of the world.  It wrecks not only the spender, but its object.  Mrs. Edes was horribly and unworthily unhappy, reflecting upon Mrs. Sarah Joy Snyder and Mrs. Slade.  She cared very much because Mrs. Slade and not she had brought about this success of the Zenith Club, with Mrs. Snyder as high-light.  It was a shame to her, but she could not help it, because one living within narrow horizons must have limited aims.

If only her husband had enough money to enable her to live in New York after the manner which would have suited her, she felt capable of being a leading power in that great and dreadful city.  Probably she was right.  The woman was in reality possessed of abnormal nerve force.  Had Wilbur Edes owned millions, and she been armed with the power which they can convey, she might have worked miracles in her subtle feminine fashion.  She would always have worked subtly, and never believed her feminine self.  She understood its worth too well.  She would have conquered like a cat, because she understood her weapons, her velvet charm, her purr, and her claws.  She would not have attempted a growling and bulky leap into success.  She would have slid and insinuated and made her gliding progress almost imperceptible, but none the less remorseless.

But she was fated to live in Fairbridge.  What else could she do?  Wilbur Edes was successful in his profession, but he was not an accumulator, and neither was she.  His income was large during some years, but it was spent during those years for things which seemed absolutely indispensable to both husband and wife.  For instance, to-night Wilbur would spend an extravagant sum upon this dinner, which he was to give at an extravagant hotel to some people whom Mrs. Edes had met last summer, and who, if not actually in the great swim, were in the outer froth of it, and she had vague imaginings of future gain through them.  Wilbur had carried his dress suit in that morning.  He was to take a room in the hotel and change, and meet her at the New York side of the ferry.  As she thought of the ferry it was all Mrs. Edes could do to keep her smooth brow from a frown.  Somehow the ferry always humiliated her; the necessity of going up or down that common, democratic gang plank, clinging to the tail of her fine gown, and seating herself in a row with people who glanced askance at her evening wrap and her general magnificence.