And Mrs. Alden went on to set forth the difference between these “sets”; they ran from the most exclusive down to the most “yellow,” where they shaded off into the disreputable rich—­of whom, it seemed, there were hordes in the city.  These included “sporting” and theatrical and political people, some of whom were very rich indeed; and these sets in turn shaded off into the criminals and the demi-monde—­who might also easily be rich.  “Some day,” said Mrs. Alden “you should get my brother to tell you about all these people.  He’s been in politics, you know, and he has a racing-stable.”

And Mrs. Alden told him about the subtle little differences in the conventions of these various sets of Society.  There was the matter of women smoking, for instance.  All women smoked, nowadays; but some would do it only in their own apartments, with their women friends; and some would retire to an out-of-the-way corner to do it; while others would smoke in their own dining-rooms, or wherever the men smoked.  All agreed however, in never smoking “in public”—­that is, where they would be seen by people not of their own set.  Such, at any rate, had always been the rule, though a few daring ones were beginning to defy even that.

Such rules were very rigid, but they were purely conventional, they had nothing to do with right or wrong:  a fact which Mrs. Alden set forth with her usual incisiveness.  A woman, married or unmarried, might travel with a man all over Europe, and every one might know that she did it, but it would make no difference, so long as she did not do it in America.  There was one young matron whom Montague would meet, a raging beauty, who regularly got drunk at dinner parties, and had to be escorted to her carriage by the butler.  She moved in the most exclusive circles, and every one treated it as a joke.  Unpleasant things like this did not hurt a person unless they got “out”—­that is, unless they became a scandal in the courts or the newspapers.  Mrs. Alden herself had a cousin (whom she cordially hated) who had gotten a divorce from her husband and married her lover forthwith and had for this been ostracized by Society.  Once when she came to some semi-public affair, fifty women had risen at once and left the room!  She might have lived with her lover, both before and after the divorce, and every one might have known it, and no one would have cared; but the convenances declared that she should not marry him until a year had elapsed after the divorce.

One thing to which Mrs. Alden could testify, as a result of a lifetime’s observation, was the rapid rate at which these conventions, even the most essential of them, were giving way, and being replaced by a general “do as you please.”  Anyone could see that the power of women like Mrs. Devon, who represented the old regime, and were dignified and austere and exclusive, was yielding before the onslaught of new people, who were bizarre and fantastic and promiscuous and loud.  And the younger sets