Mrs. Cecil Grainger may safely have been called a Personality, and one of the proofs of this was that she haunted people who had never seen her.  Honora might have looked at her, it is true, on the memorable night of the dinner with Mrs. Holt and Trixton Brent; but—­for sufficiently obvious reasons—­refrained.  It would be an exaggeration to say that Mrs. Grainger became an obsession with our heroine; yet it cannot be denied that, since Honora’s arrival at Quicksands, this lady had, in increasing degrees, been the subject of her speculations.  The threads of Mrs. Grainger’s influence were so ramified, indeed, as to be found in Mrs. Dallam, who declared she was the rudest woman in New York and yet had copied her brougham; in Mr. Cuthbert and Trixton Brent; in Mrs. Kame; in Mrs. Holt, who proclaimed her a tower of strength in charities; and lastly in Mr. Grainger himself, who, although he did not spend much time in his wife’s company, had for her an admiration that amounted to awe.

Elizabeth Grainger, who was at once modern and tenaciously conservative, might have been likened to some of the Roman matrons of the aristocracy in the last years of the Republic.  Her family, the Pendletons, had traditions:  so, for that matter, had the Graingers.  But Senator Pendleton, antique homo virtute et fide, had been a Roman of the old school who would have preferred exile after the battle of Philippi; and who, could he have foreseen modern New York and modern finance, would have been more content to die when he did.  He had lived in Washington Square.  His daughter inherited his executive ability, many of his prejudices (as they would now be called), and his habit of regarding favourable impressions with profound suspicion.  She had never known the necessity of making friends:  hers she had inherited, and for some reason specially decreed, they were better than those of less fortunate people.

Mrs. Grainger was very tall.  And Sargent, in his portrait of her, had caught with admirable art the indefinable, yet partly supercilious and scornful smile with which she looked down upon the world about her.  She possessed the rare gift of combining conventionality with personal distinction in her dress.  Her hair was almost Titian red in colour, and her face (on the authority of Mr. Reginald Farwell) was at once modern and Italian Renaissance.  Not the languid, amorous Renaissance, but the lady of decision who chose, and did not wait to be chosen.  Her eyes had all the colours of the tapaz, and her regard was so baffling as to arouse intense antagonism in those who were not her friends.

To Honora, groping about for a better and a higher life, the path of philanthropy had more than once suggested itself.  And on the day of Peter’s visit to New York, when she had lunched with Mrs. Holt, she had signified her willingness (now that she had come to live in town) to join the Working Girls’ Relief Society.  Mrs. Holt, needless to say, was overjoyed:  they were to have a meeting at her house in the near future which Honora must not fail to attend.  It was not, however, without a feeling of trepidation natural to a stranger that she made her way to that meeting when the afternoon arrived.