10.  For several days I waited upon the postman, and when the summons came I dodged a committee-meeting, and ascended the marble stairs with trepidation, and underwent the doubting scrutiny of an English lackey, sufficiently grave in deportment and habiliments to have waited upon a bishop in his own land.  I have a vague memory of an entrance-hall with panelled paintings and a double-staircase with a snow-white carpet, about which I had read in the newspapers that it was woven in one piece, and had cost an incredible sum.  One did not have to profane it with his feet, as there was an elevator provided.

I was shown to Sylvia’s morning-room, which had been “done” in pink and white and gold by some decorator who had known her colours.  It was large enough to have held half-a-dozen of my own quarters, and the sun was allowed to flood it.  Through a door at one side came Sylvia, holding out her hands to me.

She was really glad to see me!  She began to apologize at once for the time she had taken to write.  It was because she had so much to do.  She had married into a world that took itself seriously:  the “idle rich,” who worked like slaves.  “You know,” she said, while we sat on a pink satin couch, and a footman brought us coffee:  “you read that Mrs. So-and-so is a ‘social queen,’ and you think it’s a newspaper phrase, but it isn’t; she really feels that she’s a queen, and other people feel it, and she goes through her ceremonies as solemnly as the Lord’s anointed.”

She went on to tell me some of her adventures.  She had a keen sense of fun, and was evidently suffering for an outlet for it.  She saw through the follies and pretences of people in a flash, but they were all such august and important people that, out of regard for her husband, she dared not let them suspect her clairvoyant power.

She referred to her experiences abroad.  She had not liked Europe—­being quite frankly a provincial person.  To Castleman County a foreigner was a strange, dark person who mixed up his consonants, and was under suspicion of being a fiddler or an opera-singer.  The people she had met under her husband’s charge had been socially indubitable, but still, they were foreigners, and Sylvia could never really be sure what they meant.

There was, for instance, the young son of a German steel-king, a person of amazing savoir faire, who had made bold to write books and exhibit pictures, and had travelled so widely that he had even heard of Castleman County.  He had taken Sylvia to show her the sights of Berlin, and had rolled her down the “Sieges Allée,” making outrageous fun of his Kaiser’s taste in art, and coming at last to a great marble column, with a female figure representing Victory upon the top.  “You will observe,” said the cultured young plutocrat, “that the Grecian lady stands a hundred meters in the air, and has no stairway.  There is a popular saying about her which is delightful—­that she is the only chaste woman in Berlin!”