interesting to her and made her mouth water.

Just as she had maneuvered her way across the wide, long room and
was within reach of the door, it opened and her grandmother hobbled
in, leaning on her stick. There was a chuckle from the other end of
the room. The blood flew to the girl's face. She knew without
turning to look that the old man had been watching her careful
escape and was enjoying the sight of her, caught at the moment when
freedom was at hand.

Mrs. Ludlow was one of those busy little women who are thorns in the
flesh of servants. Her eyes had always been like those of an
inspecting general. No detail, however small, went unnoticed and
unrectified.

She had been called by an uncountable number of housemaids and
footmen "the little Madam"--the most sarcastic term of opprobrium
contained in their dictionary. A leader of New York society, she had
run charitable institutions and new movements with the same
precision and efficiency that she had used in her houses. Every hour
of her day had been filled. Not one moment had been wasted or
frittered away. Her dinner parties had been famous, and she had had
a spoke in the wheels of politics. Her witty sayings had been passed
from mouth to mouth. Her little flirtations with prominent men and
the ambitious tyros who had been drawn to her salon had given rise
to much gossip. Not by any means a beauty, her pretty face and
tiptilted nose, her perennial cheerfulness, birdlike vivacity and
gift of repartee had made her the center of attraction for years.

But she, like Cumberland Ludlow, had refused to grow old gracefully