She glanced approvingly at the rich attire spread upon the bed, and then thought again of the dreadful ferry, and her undignified hop across the dirty station to the boat.  She longed for the days of sedan chairs, for anything rather than this.  She was an exquisite lady caught in the toils of modern cheap progress toward all her pleasures and profits.  She did not belong in a democratic country at all unless she had millions.  She was out of place, as much out of place as a splendid Angora in an alley.  Fairbridge to her instincts was as an alley; yet since it was her alley, she had to make the best of it.  Had she not made the best of it, exalted it, magnified it, she would have gone mad.  Wherefore the triumph of Mrs. Slade in presenting Mrs. Sarah Joy Snyder seemed to her like an affair of moment.  For lack of something greater to hate and rival, she hated and rivalled Mrs. Slade.  For lack of something big over which to reign, she wished to reign over Fairbridge and the Zenith Club.  Mrs. Slade’s perfectly-matched drawing-room took on the semblance of a throne-room, in which she had seen herself usurped.

Then she thought of the young clergyman, even as he was thinking of her.  She knew perfectly well how he had been trapped, but she failed to see the slightest humour in it.  She had no sense of humour.  She saw only the additional triumph of Mrs. Slade in securing this rather remarkable man at the Zenith Club, something which she herself had never been able to do.  Von Rosen’s face came before her.  She considered it a handsome face, but no man’s face could disturb her.  She held her virtue with as nervous a clutch as she held up her fine gown.  To soil either would be injudicious, impolitic, and she never desired the injudicious and impolitic.

“He is a handsome man,” she said to herself, “an aristocratic-looking man.”  Then the telephone bell close beside her divan rang, and she took up the receiver carefully, not moving her head, sat up, and put her delicate lips to the speaking tube.

“Hello,” said a voice, and she recognised it as Von Rosen’s although it had an agitated, nervous ring which was foreign to it.

“What is it?” she said in reply, and the voice responded with volubility, “A girl, a young Syrian girl, is at my home.  She is in a swoon or something.  We cannot revive her.  Is the doctor at home?  Tell him to hurry over, please.  I am Mr. von Rosen.  Tell him to hurry.  She may be dead.”

“You have made a mistake, Mr. von Rosen,” said Mrs. Edes’ thin voice, as thin and silvery as a reed.  “You are speaking to Mrs. Wilbur Edes.  My telephone number is 5R.  You doubtless want Doctor Sturtevant.  His number is 51M.”

“Oh, pardon,” cried the voice over the telephone.  “Sorry to have disturbed you, Mrs. Edes, I mistook—­”