The "smart set" of Elsinore was composed of the twelve women that could afford to lose most at bridge. Mrs. Balfame, who could ill afford to lose anything, but who was both a scientific and a lucky player, insisted upon moderate stakes. The other members of this inner exclusive circle were the wives of two bankers, three contractors, two prosperous merchants, one judge, one doctor, and two commuters who made their incomes in New York and slept in Elsinore. These ladies made it a point of honor to dine at seven, dress smartly and appropriately for all occasions, attend everything worth while to which they could obtain entrance in New York, pay an occasional visit to Europe, read the new novels and attend the symphony concerts. It is superfluous to add that the very foundation of the superior social status of each was a large house of the affluent type peculiar to the prosperous annexes of old communities, half brick and half wood, shallow, characterless, impersonal; and a fine car with a limousine top. The house stood in the midst of a lawn sloping to the street, unconfined by even the box hedge and undivided from the neighbouring grounds. The garage, little less pretentious than the mansion, also faced the street, for all to see. There was hardly a horse left in Elsinore; taxi cabs awaited the traveller at the station, and people that could not afford handsome cars purchased and enjoyed the inexpensive runabout. Mrs. Balfame had segregated her smart set for strategic reasons, but that did not mean that both she and they were not kindness itself to the less favoured. Obviously, an imposing party cannot be given by twelve families alone, especially when almost half their number are childless. On all state occasions the list of invited numbered several hundred, in that town of some five thousand inhabitants. It said much for the innate nobility of these wealthier dames of Elsinore, who read the New York society papers quite as attentively as they did the war news, that they submitted without a struggle to the dominance of a woman who never had possessed a car and whose husband's income was so often diverted from its natural course; but Mrs. Balfame not only outclassed them in inflexibility of purpose, but her family was as old as Brabant County; the Dawbarns had never been in what might be called the cavalry regiment, consisting of those few chosen ones living in old colonial houses set in large estates and with both roots and branches in the city of New York; but no one disputed their right to be called Captains of the infantry. And Mrs. Balfame, sole survivor in the direct line, had two wealthy cousins in Brooklyn.