These strides into the realm of fashion, if at first startling to the _débutante_, were quickly acknowledged to be imperatively necessary if one would really live. Kitty’s taste in dress approximated genius. Even she was hardly prepared for the ready following of her neophyte. Had she needed corroborative evidence of the cashier’s liberal income, his wife’s command of considerable sums supplied it. With all her frankness, Mrs. Cornell did not confide to her bosom-friend where she obtained the ready money that gained her credit with new tradespeople. Now and then an uneasy qualm stirred the would-be comfortable soul of the wife as to how much or how little Arthur speculated within his sober soul upon the probable cost of her new outfit. There were two thousand dollars deposited in her name, and drawing interest in a Brooklyn Savings Bank. The rich aunt had given her namechild three-quarters of it from time to time. The young couple had saved the rest, and it was tacitly understood that it should not be touched except of necessity. No landmark in her new career was more pronounced than Susie’s resort to this fund for the equipment without which her dawning social success would, she felt, lapse into obscurity more ignominious than that from which she had emerged. She must have the things represented by the money, and intoxicated though she was, she had still too much sense and conscience to deplete her husband’s purse to the extent demanded by the exigency. He would have opened an artery to gratify her, had heart’s blood been coin, but she knew he would look grave and pained did he suspect her visits to the Bank and their result. He was sober enough, nowadays, without additional cause of discomfort. When questioned, he averred that all was going right at the Bank, and that he was well. Nor would he confess to loneliness on the evenings when she was obliged to leave him in obedience to Kitty’s summons to rehearsal or consultation in some of the countless schemes of amusement the two were all the while concocting. “Don’t trouble yourself to come for me or to sit up for me, dear,” the pleasure-monger would entreat in bidding him “good-by.” “I’ll have one of the maids call for me,” or “I have a carriage,” or—and after a time this was most frequent of all—“Jack Hitt is always very obliging about bringing me home.”