was in the hands of Mrs. Hallett Taylor and her friends, between whom and herself she felt that a chasm of irreconcilable differences of opinion existed.  Mrs. Taylor had not called on her since her return.  She believed that she was glad of this, and hoped that some of the severely indignant criticism which she had uttered in regard to the Reform Club movement had reached her ears.  Or was Mrs. Taylor envious of her return to Benham as the true mistress of this fine establishment on the River Drive, so superior to her own?  Nevertheless, it would have suited Selma to have been one of the trustees of this new college—­her husband’s handiwork in the doing of which he had laid down his promising life—­and the fact that no one had sought her out and offered her the honor as a fitting recognition of her due was secretly mortifying.  The Benham Institute had been prompt to acknowledge her presence by giving a reception in her honor, at which she was able to recite once more, “Oh, why should the Spirit of Mortal be proud?” with old-time success, and she had been informed by Mrs. Earle that she was likely to be chosen one of the Vice-Presidents at the annual meeting.  But these Reform Club people had not even done her the courtesy to ask her to join them or consider their opinions.  She would have spurned the invitation with contempt, but it piqued her not to know more about them; it distressed her to think that there should exist in Benham an exclusive set which professed to be ethically and intellectually superior and did not include her, for she had come to Benham with the intention of leading such a movement, to the detriment of fashion and frivolity.  With Mr. Parsons’s money at her back, she was serenely confident that the houses of the magnates of Benham—­the people who corresponded in her mind’s eye to the dwellers on Fifth Avenue—­would open to her.  Already there had been flattering indications that she would be able to command attention there.  She had expected to find this so; her heart would have been broken to find it otherwise.  Still, her hope in shaking the dust of New York from her feet had been to find in Benham an equally admirable and satisfactory atmosphere in regard to mental and moral progress.  She had come just in time, it is true, to utter her vehement protest against this exclusive, aristocratic movement—­this arrogant affectation of superiority, and to array herself in battle line against it, resolved to give herself up with enthusiasm to its annihilation.  Yet the sight of the college buildings for the higher education of women, rising without her furtherance and supervision, and under the direction of these people, made her sad and gave her a feeling of disappointment.  Why had they been permitted to obtain this foothold?  Someone had been lacking in vigilance and foresight.  Thank heaven, with her return and a strong, popular spirit like Mr. Lyons in the lead, these unsympathetic, so-called reformers would speedily be confounded, and the intellectual air of Benham restored to its original purity.