Norma, a negligible factor in Annie's life when she first appeared, had quite innocently become a problem during that first summer. While not a Melrose, she was a member of the Melrose family, making her home with one of the daughters of the house. Annie might ignore Norma, but there were plenty of women, and men, too, who saw in the girl a valuable social lever. To become intimate with little Miss Sheridan meant that one might go up to her, at teas and dinners, while she was with Mrs. Melrose, or young Mrs. Liggett, or even Mrs. von Behrens herself, in a casual, friendly manner that indicated, to a watching world, a comfortable footing with the family. Norma was consequently selected for social attention. Annie saw this immediately, and when all the families were settled in town again, she decided to take Norma's social training in hand, as she had done Leslie's, and make sure that no undesirable cockle was sown among the family fields. She would have done exactly the same if Norma had been the least attractive of girls, but Norma fancied that her own qualities had won Annie's reluctant friendship, and was accordingly pleased. CHAPTER XII Eight months later, in the clear sunshine of a late autumn morning, a slender young woman came down the steps of the Melrose house, after an hour's call on the old mistress, and turned briskly toward Fifth Avenue. In figure, in carriage, and even in the expression of her charming and animated face, she was different from the girl who had come to that same house to make a call with Aunt Kate, on the day after the big blizzard, yet it was the same Norma Sheridan who nodded a refusal to the driver of the big motor-car that was waiting, and set off by herself for her walk. The old Norma, straight from Biretta's Bookshop, had been pretty in plain serge and shabby fur. But this Norma--over whose soft thick belted coat a beautiful silver-fox skin was linked, whose heavy, ribbed silk hose disappeared into slim, flat, shining pumps that almost caressed the slender foot, whose dark hair had the lustre that comes from intelligent care, and whose handsome little English hat was the only one of its special cut in the world--was a conspicuously attractive figure even in a world of well-groomed girls, and almost deserved to be catalogued as a beauty. From the hat to the shoes she was palpably correct, and Norma knew, and never could quite sufficiently revel in the knowing, that the blouse and the tailored skirt that were under the coat were correct, too, and that under blouse and skirt were cobwebby linens and perfumed ribbons and sheerest silks that were equally perfect in their way. Leslie's bulldog, pulling on his strap, kept her moving rapidly, and girl and dog exacted from almost all the passers-by that tribute of glances to which Norma was now beginning to be accustomed.