who had turned a cold shoulder on her was hostile to the spirit of American institutions.  So far as her husband was concerned, imaginative enterprise and the capacity to take advantage of opportunities still seemed to her of the essence of fine character.  Indeed, she was not conscious of any change in her point of view.  She had resented Flossy’s charge that she desired to be a social success, and had declared that her wounded feelings were solely due to Flossy’s betrayal of friendship, not to balked social ambition.  Consequently it was no strain on her conscientiousness to feel that her real sentiments had always been the same.

Nevertheless she scrutinized herself eagerly and long in her mirror, and the process left her serious brow still clouded.  She saw in the glass features which seemed to her suggestive of superior womanhood, a slender clear-cut nose, the nostrils of which dilated nervously, delicately thin, compressed lips, a pale, transparent complexion, and clear, steel-like, greenish-brown eyes looking straight and boldly from an anxious forehead surmounted with a coiffure of elaborately and smoothly arranged hair.  She saw indisputable evidence that she had ceased to be the ethically attractive, but modishly unsophisticated and physically undeveloped girl, who had come to New York five years before, for her figure was compact without being unduly plump, her cheeks becomingly oval, and her toilette stylish.  There were rings on her fingers, and her neck-gear was smart.  Altogether the vision was satisfactory, yet she recognized as she gazed that her appearance and general effect were not precisely those of Flossy, Pauline, or Mrs. Hallett Taylor.  She had always prided herself on the distinction of her face, and admired especially its freedom from gross or unintellectual lines.  She did not intend to question its superiority now; but Flossy’s offensive words rang in her ears and caused her to gnaw her lips with annoyance.  What was the difference between them?  Flossy had dared to call her common and superficial; had dared to insinuate that she never could be a lady.  A lady?  What was there in her appearance not lady-like?  In what way was she the inferior of any of them in beauty, intelligence or character?  Rigorous as was the scrutiny, the face in the mirror seemed to her an unanswerable refutation of the slander.  What was the difference?  Was it that her eyes were keener and brighter, her lips thinner and less fleshly, her general expression more wide-awake and self-reliant?  If so, were these not signs of superiority; signs that they, not she, were deficient in the attributes of the best modern womanhood in spite of their affectation of exclusiveness?