as Mr. Frederick Prendergast, and for a little while he was
disapproved there on the score of having engaged himself to a Miss
Anderson, Madeline Anderson, whom nobody knew anything about. There
was her own little circle, as I have said, and it lacked neither
dignity nor refinement, but I doubt whether any member of it was
valeted from London, or could imply, in conversation, a personal
acquaintance with Yvette Guilbert. There is no need, however, to
insist that there are many persons of comfortable income and much
cultivation in New York, who would not be met by strangers having
what are called the 'best' introductions there. The best so often
fails to include the better. It may be accepted that Madeline
Anderson and her people were of these, and that she wondered
sometimes during the brief days of her engagement what it would be
like to belong to the brilliant little world about her that had its
visiting list in London, Paris, or St. Petersburg, and was immensely
entertained by the gaucheries of the great ones of the earth.

Then came, with the most unexceptionable introductions, Miss Violet
Forde, from a Sloane Square address, London. She came leaning on
the arm of a brother, the only relative she had in the world, and so
brilliant was the form of these young people that it occurred to
nobody to imagine that it had the most precarious pecuniary
foundation, must have faded and shrivelled indeed, after another
year or two of anything but hospitality as generous as that of New
York. Well-nourished and undimmed, however, it concealed for them
admirably the fact that it was the hospitality they were after, and
not the bracing climate or the desire to see the fascinating
Americans of London and Paris at home. New York found them
agreeable specimens of high-spirited young English people, and
played with them indefinitely. Miss Forde, when she sat