Meantime Tamms, the man who ruled the Allegheny Central, was continually at the office; for he was not without anxiety about all this. His clever manœuvres of the previous summer had had one result of doubtful benefit; it had left him saddled with all the Starbuck Oil Works stock, and nearly all the Allegheny Central. A time of extreme prosperity had been expected by him that year; he had just made one great monopoly of all the neighboring coal interests; but the one thing even clever Tamms could not see and provide against was a general revolt among the men and women whose lives, as he thought, he had bought and paid for. Mrs. Tamms and the daughters had come back from Europe, loaded with rich laces and new gowns, and paying a pretty figure therefor at the custom-house; but without any offers of marriage as yet, or at least without sufficiently brilliant ones. Charlie, too, was at the office frequently, and when he was there, looked into things pretty closely; though Arthur was still revelling in the new delights of Newport. Old Mr. Townley would come in regularly once a month, and cut the coupons off the bonds of his trusts. Thence he would drive up to his club--he was the oldest member now--and wag his white head sagely among his friends, financiers _emeriti_ like himself, and tell them what a treasure he had in his clever young man Tamms. Gracie came back to her aunt’s house early in October; but she came back alone. Mamie had been quite taken up by Mrs. Gower; why it should be esteemed an honor by young girls to be taken up by Mrs. Gower, I leave unsaid; but such it was. She translated them to that higher sphere which she had so completely made her own. Before such promotion a maiden was simply a pretty girl, nothing more; after it she became “the thing,” for married men to flirt with, for young men to pay attention to, and perhaps, finally, for one of them to marry. So Mamie Livingstone was staying with her at _La Lisière_. It is needless to say that Charlie Townley was there too. If Flossie was somewhat sceptical of other worlds, she was quick to recognize an eternal fitness of things in this. And what more fit than that fashion should wed wealth, and a young man who had so well proved his taste in spending money should be given a pretty helpmeet and with her the wherewithal to shine? Mrs. Gower had a good-natured custom of pensioning off, in this pleasant manner, her old adorers; for all her loves, so far, had been platonic affairs of fashion and make-believe, like the Bronx hounds’ fox-hunting. For Flossie had never been in love in her life; I question if she could be; though hoping always much to be the cause that love should be in others.