On Monday mornings in particular, if perchance she went to town, the huge signs which she read across the swamps, of breakfast foods and other necessaries, seemed, for some reason, best to express her isolation.  Well-dressed, laughing people descended from omnibuses at the prettier stations, people who seemed all-sufficient to themselves; people she was sure she should like if only she knew them.  Once the sight of her school friend, Ethel Wing, chatting with a tall young man, brought up a flood of recollections; again, in a millinery establishment, she came face to face with the attractive Mrs. Maitland whom she had seen at Hot Springs.  Sometimes she would walk on Fifth Avenue, watching, with mingled sensations, the procession there.  The colour, the movement, the sensation of living in a world where every one was fabulously wealthy, was at once a stimulation and a despair.  Brougham after brougham passed, victoria after victoria, in which beautifully gowned women chatted gayly or sat back, impassive, amidst the cushions.  Some of them, indeed, looked bored, but this did not mar the general effect of pleasure and prosperity.  Even the people—­well-dressed, too—­in the hansom cabs were usually animated and smiling.  On the sidewalk athletic, clear-skinned girls passed her, sometimes with a man, sometimes in groups of two and three, going in and out of the expensive-looking shops with the large, plate-glass windows.

All of these women, apparently, had something definite to do, somewhere to go, some one to meet the very next, minute.  They protested to milliners and dressmakers if they were kept waiting, and even seemed impatient of time lost if one by chance bumped into them.  But Honora had no imperative appointments.  Lily Dallam was almost sure to be out, or going out immediately, and seemed to have more engagements than any one in New York.

“I’m so sorry, my dear,” she would say, and add reproachfully:  “why didn’t you telephone me you were coming?  If you had only let me know we might have lunched together or gone to the matinee.  Now I have promised Clara Trowbridge to go to a lunch party at her house.”

Mrs. Dallam had a most convincing way of saying such things, and in spite of one’s self put one in the wrong for not having telephoned.  But if indeed Honora telephoned—­as she did once or twice in her innocence—­Lily was quite as distressed.

“My dear, why didn’t you let me know last night?  Trixy Brent has given Lula Chandos his box at the Horse Show, and Lula would never, never forgive me if I backed out.”

Although she lived in an apartment—­in a most attractive one, to be sure —­there could be no doubt about it that Lily Dallam was fashionable.  She had a way with her, and her costumes were marvellous.  She could have made her fortune either as a dressmaker or a house decorator, and she bought everything from “little” men and women whom she discovered herself.  It was a curious fact that all of these small tradespeople eventually became fashionable, too.  Lily was kind to Honora, and gave her their addresses before they grew to be great and insolent and careless whether one patronized them or not.