Mrs. Luttrell was vain about her drawing–room, and with reason. She proudly claimed that there was not a single technical antique in it, and frequently declared she could tell the age of any family by a glance at their drawing–room. The newer the family the more antique the furniture, and when a family was absolutely new their house was furnished with antiques, and nothing but antiques, from top to bottom. Mrs. Luttrell was gossiping hard as she sat before her drawing–room fire, shading her eyes from the leaping blaze with an old–fashioned lace fan and waiting for her guests to arrive. When Mrs. Luttrell gossiped, she was happy. One of the compensations to her for the new dispensations in Washington society was that it gave her plenty to gossip about. Ever since the advent in Washington society of pickles, dry–goods, patent medicines, shoes, whiskey, and all the other brands of honest trade, she had been engaged in a hand–to–hand fight to maintain her prestige as a leading hostess of Washington, against the swarms of newcomers, whose vast fortunes made Mrs. Luttrell’s hitherto ample income seem like genteel poverty. The rest of the “Cave–dwellers,” as the original society of Washington is now called, had never made any fight at all. They regarded the new influx with haughty disdain in the first instance, laughed at their gaucheries, and spoke of them pityingly as, “Poor Mrs. So–and–so,” “Those queer persons from nobody knows where.” The first accurate knowledge, however, that came to them of the “smart set,” as the new people are called, was when the Cave–dwellers were seized by the backs of their necks and were thrown over the ramparts of society, leaving the smart set in possession of the citadel. Mrs. Luttrell, however, was not so easily disposed of as the rest. She saw that the Chinese policy of ignoring the enemy and representing a total rout as a brilliant victory would never do; so she set about holding her own with intelligence as well as courage. She called upon the new people, invited to her house those she liked, and Baskerville, who was the only living person who dared to contradict her, declared that Mrs. Luttrell never was known to decline an invitation to dine with any form of honest trade, no matter how newly emancipated. Her strongest weapon was, however, the capacity she had always possessed of bringing men about her. She was one of those men’s women whom age cannot wither nor custom stale. Her esprit, her knowledge of how to make men comfortable in mind and body when in her house, her insidious flattery, which usually took the form of delicate raillery, had charmed successive generations of men. Her kingdom had been long established, and she knew how to reign.