“This world is money!” thought Susan, when she saw the head-waiter come forward so smilingly to meet Ella and herself at the Palm Garden; when Leonard put off a dozen meekly enduring women to finish Miss Emily Saunders’ gown on time; when the very sexton at church came hurrying to escort Mrs. Saunders and herself through the disappointed crowds in the aisles, and establish them in, and lock them in, the big empty pew.  The newspapers gave half a column of blame to the little girl who tried to steal a two-dollar scarf from the Emporium, but there was nothing but admiration for Ella on the day when she and a twenty-year-old boy, for a wager, led a woolly white toy lamb, a lamb costing twenty-five dollars, through the streets, from the club to the Palace Hotel.  The papers were only deeply interested and amused when Miss Elsa Chisholm gave a dinner to six favorite riding-horses, who were entertained in the family dining-room after a layer of tan-bark had been laid on the floor, and fed by their owners from specially designed leather bags and boxes; and they merely reported the fact that Miss Dolly Ripley had found so unusual an intelligence in her gardener that she had deeded to him her grandfather’s eighty-thousand-dollar library.  “He really has ever so much better brains than I have, don’t you know?” said Miss Ripley to the press.

In return for the newspapers’ indulgent attitude, however, they were shown no clemency by the Saunders and the people of their set.  On a certain glorious, golden afternoon in May, Susan, twisting a card that bore the name of Miss Margaret Summers, representing the chronicle, went down to see the reporter.  The Saunders family hated newspaper notoriety, but it was a favorite saying that since the newspapers would print things anyway, they might as well get them straight, and Susan often sent dinner or luncheon lists to the three morning papers.

However, the young woman who rose when Susan went into the drawing-room was not in search of news.  Her young, pretty face was full of distress.

“Miss Saunders?” asked she.

“I’m Miss Brown,” Susan said.  “Miss Saunders is giving a card-party and I am to act for her.”

Miss Summers, beginning her story, also began to cry.  She was the society editor, she explained, and two weeks before she had described in her column a luncheon given by Miss Emily Saunders.  Among the list of guests she had mentioned Miss Carolyn Seymour.

“Not Carolyn Seymour!” said Susan, shocked.  “Why, she never is here!  The Seymours—–­” she shook her head.  “I know people do accept them,” said Susan, “but the Saunders don’t even know them!  They’re not in the best set, you know, they’re really hardly in society at all!”