All this belongs, however, to another history, which may some day be written.  This one is Honora’s, and must be got on with, for it is to be a chronicle of lightning changes.  Happy we if we can follow Honora, and we must be prepared to make many friends and drop them in the process.

Shortly after Mrs. Hayden had built that palatial house (which had a high fence around its grounds and a driveway leading to a porte-cochere) and had given her initial ball, the dancing class began.  It was on a blue afternoon in late November that Aunt Mary and Honora, with Cousin Eleanor and the two girls, and George sulking in a corner of the carriage, were driven through the gates behind Bias and the fat horses of the Hanburys.

Honora has a vivid remembrance of the impression the house made on her, with its polished floors and spacious rooms filled with a new and mysterious and altogether inspiring fashion of things.  Mrs. Hayden represented the outposts in the days of Richardson and Davenport—­had Honora but known it.  This great house was all so different from anything she (and many others in the city) had ever seen.  And she stood gazing into the drawing room, with its curtains and decorously drawn shades, in a rapture which her aunt and cousins were far from guessing.

“Come, Honora,” said her aunt.  “What’s the matter, dear?”

How could she explain to Aunt Mary that the sight of beautiful things gave her a sort of pain—­when she did not yet know it herself?  There was the massive stairway, for instance, which they ascended, softly lighted by a great leaded window of stained glass on the first landing; and the spacious bedrooms with their shining brass beds and lace spreads (another innovation which Honora resolved to adopt when she married); and at last, far above all, its deep-set windows looking out above the trees towards the park a mile to the westward, the ballroom,—­the ballroom, with its mirrors and high chandeliers, and chairs of gilt and blue set against the walls, all of which made no impression whatever upon George and Mary and Edith, but gave Honora a thrill.  No wonder that she learned to dance quickly under such an inspiration!

And how pretty Mrs. Hayden looked as she came forward to greet them and kissed Honora!  She had been Virginia Grey, and scarce had had a gown to her back when she had married the elderly Duncan Hayden, who had built her this house and presented her with a checkbook,—­a check-book which Virginia believed to be like the widow’s cruse of oil-unfailing.  Alas, those days of picnics and balls; of dinners at that recent innovation, the club; of theatre-parties and excursions to baseball games between the young men in Mrs. Hayden’s train (and all young men were) who played at Harvard or Yale or Princeton; those days were too care-free to have endured.

“Aunt Mary,” asked Honora, when they were home again in the lamplight of the little sitting-room, “why was it that Mr. Meeker was so polite to Cousin Eleanor, and asked her about my dancing instead of you?”