How did Ashton Carmichael come by his aristocratic and decidedly individual place as a dictator in New York’s smart society? Nobody knew; nobody really cared. In his set it was sufficient for one sheep to jump, and all the rest would follow. He was as much a power as was Beau Brummell over modish London in the days of the Regency. Asked everywhere, deferred to with bated breath by new aspirants, he was seen only at the houses of authenticated fashion. In the clubs to which he belonged--and the list of them was long, following his name in the Social Register--some men affected to pooh-pooh his right to membership; but rarely was there a member of a committee on admissions found to vote against him on the score of fitness. Good-looking, gentlemanlike, amusing when it suited him to be so, sarcastic--and, on occasion, offensively snobbish--his uncertainties of mood lent zest to pursuit by his admirers. He had no known income beyond that derived from a nebulous business in real estate in which he was alleged to hold a partnership. His place of residence was in a couple of cheapish rooms in an out-of-the-way neighborhood. But all the good things of life seemed to fall easily to his share; and winter and summer, on land, at sea, he was heard of, in ripe enjoyment of luxuries earned or inherited by other people. As a matter of fact, while the general public languished in ignorance of Carmichael’s antecedents, there were two or three individuals in New York who could have told his story from A to Z, but preferred for various reasons to keep their mouths shut. One of these was Tom Oliver, Carmichael’s chum at college and his sponsor in the initiatory steps of worldly progress. Another was Tom’s sister Eunice, now pretty Mrs. Arden Farnsworth, who, in days of lang syne, had been engaged to her brother’s handsome friend. The third was a brave, hard-working young woman journalist on the staff of a great city newspaper; a girl who never troubled Carmichael with her presence, although she bore his name, and had given all her little patrimony to help her only brother through the university and provide him a start in life.