She found it all astonishingly easy. Of course she never had met, probably never would meet, the really wealthy families that owned large estates in the county and haughtily entertained one another when not entertaining equally exclusive New Yorkers. But Mrs. Balfame did not waste time in envy of these people; there were old families in her own and neighbouring villages, proud of their three or four generations on the same farm, well-to-do but easy-going, democratic and, when not so old as to be "moss-backs," hospitable to new notions. Many, indeed, had built new homes in the expanding village, which bade fair to embrace choice bits of the farms. Mrs. Balfame always had dominated these life-long neighbours and associates, and the gradual newcomers were quick to recognise her power and her superior mind; to realise that not to know Mrs. Balfame was to be a commuter and no more. Everything helped her. Even the substantial house, inherited from her father-in-law, and still surrounded by four acres of land, stood at the head of the original street of the village, a long wide street so thickly planted with maples as old as the farms that from spring until Christmas the soft leafy boughs interlaced overhead. She had a subtle but iron will, and a quite commonplace personality disguised by the cold, sweet, stately and gracious manner so much admired by women; and she was quite unhampered by the least of that originality or waywardness which antagonises the orthodox. Moreover, she dressed her tall slender figure with unerring taste. Of course she was obliged to wear her smart tailored suits for two years, but they always looked new and were worn with an air that quite doubled their not insignificant price. By women she was thought very beautiful, but men, for the most part, passed her by. For eight years now, Mrs. Balfame had been the acknowledged leader of Elsinore. It was she who had founded the Friday Club, at first for general cultivation of mind, of late to study the obsessing subject of Woman. She cared not a straw for the privilege of voting; in fact, she thought it would be an extremely unladylike thing to do; but a leader must always be at the head of the procession, while discriminating betwixt fad and fashion. It was she who had established a connection with a respectable club in New York; it was she who had inveigled the substantial well-dressed and radical personage on the rostrum beside her to come over and homilise upon the subject of "The European War _vs._ Woman."