She found herself, however, in spite of her declared devotion to her serious duties, noting that the recognition accorded to Mr. Parsons and herself was not precisely of the character she craved.  The visiting-cards and invitations were from people residing on the River Drive and in that neighborhood, indeed—­but from people like the Flaggs, for instance, who, having acquired large wealth and erected lordly dwellings, were eager to dispense good-natured, lavish hospitality without social experience.  Her sensitive ordeal in New York had quickened her social perceptions, so that whereas at the time of her departure from Benham as Mrs. Littleton she regarded her present neighborhood as an integral class, she was now prompt to separate the sheep from the goats, and to remark that only the goats seemed conscious of her existence.  With the exception of Mrs. Taylor, who had called when she was out, not one of a certain set, the outward manifestations of whose stately being were constantly passing her windows, appeared to take the slightest interest in her.  Strictly speaking, Mrs. Taylor was of this set, yet apart from it.  Hers was the exclusive intellectual and aesthetic set, this the exclusive fashionable set—­both alike execrable and foreign to the traditions of Benham.  As Selma had discovered the one and declared war against it, so she promised herself to confound the other when the period of her mourning was over, and she was free to appear again in society.  Once more she congratulated herself that she had come in time to nip in the bud this other off-shoot of aristocratic tendencies.  As yet either set was small in number, and she foresaw that it would be an easy task to unite in a solid phalanx of offensive-defensive influence the friendly souls whom these people treated as outsiders, and purge the society atmosphere of the miasma of exclusiveness.  In connection with the means to this end, when the winter slipped away and left her feeling that she had been ignored, and that she was eager to assume a commanding position, she began to take more than passing thought of the attentions of Mr. Lyons.  That he was interested by her there could be no doubt, for he plainly went out of his way to seek her society, calling at the house from time to time, and exercising a useful, nattering superintendence over her lecture course in the other cities of the State, in each of which he appeared to have friends on the newspaper press who put agreeable notices in print concerning her performance.  She had returned to Benham believing that her married life was over; that her heart was in the grave with Wilbur, and that she would never again part with her independence.  The notice which Mr. Lyons had taken of her from the outset had gratified her, but though she contrasted his physical energy with Wilbur’s lack of vigor, it had not occurred to her to consider him in the light of a possible husband.  Now that a year had passed since Wilbur’s death, she felt conscious once