"Because (she'd kill me if she heard this) she has only lately got into the Right Set herself, and after trouble enough to give an ordinary woman nervous prostration. That kind of thing _does_ give it to a lot of women--especially if they fail. But Cousin Katherine very seldom fails. She almost always carries things through. If you knew anything about America in general, and New York in particular, you'd be able to realise what a hard time she's had, when I tell you that till her husband died she lived west of Chicago. To get into the Four Hundred if you've lived west of Chicago, (unless you're Californian, which is getting to be fashionable), is just like having to climb over one of those great, high walls of yours in England, bristling with nails or broken glass." "My goodness!" I exclaimed. "How funny! Fancy if people who live in Surrey should glare at people who live in Devonshire." "That's different. You see, Chicago is _new_." "But so is all America, isn't it?" I asked, stupidly. "What difference can a hundred or so years make?" "We haven't begun to think in centuries yet, on our side of the water, my deah." (She has the most delicious way of saying "my deah," and all her "r's" are soft like that; only it's too much trouble to write them for nobody but myself to see.) "Anyhow, it _is_ so, between New York and Chicago people--that is, the people who count in Society with a big S: and it was a great triumph for my cousin to become the Three-Hundred-and-Ninety-Ninth in the Four Hundred. She did it by buying a Russian Prince." "_Buying_ a----" "Yes, love, he was going to the highest bidder, and she bought him. That is, she entertained him so gorgeously and did so many nice things for him, that he posed as her property; and as everyone was dying to meet him, it _made_ her. She'd been working killingly hard before that, for a whole year after taking her house on Fifth Avenue and building her cottage at Newport, but it was buying the Prince which did the trick. On the strength of that episode and its consequences, she went to Europe with very nice introductions, and as you know, deah, she has made some valuable as well as pleasant friends. To live up to them and her reputation, she will have to be busy for a while dropping a lot of old acquaintances." "How horrid!" I couldn't help exclaiming, though Mrs. Ess Kay was going to be my hostess. "Yes, it seems rather miserable to me, because I'm a weak, lazy, Southern thing, who would be right down sick, if I had to hurt any human being's feelings. Yet perhaps it looks fair to her. She's so ambitious, and she's worked so hard, she _has_ deserved to succeed. As for poor me, she just regularly mesmerises me all through. She mesmerised me into coming up from Kentucky and visiting her this spring; then she mesmerised me into going with her to Europe. But I'm not sorry I went, for I've had a _right_ good time."