As far as I could understand the matter, which had been explained to me once or twice, my aunt was exclusive. In the rush of the newly come and the rise of the newly rich, which marked the last quarter of the nineteenth century in New York, she and a few like-minded friends had made it their business to pick and choose and form what might literally be called an _élite_. By 1913, however, the _élite_ was not only formed but founded on a rock as firm as the granite of Manhattan, and Annette’s picking and choosing could be on another principle. Hers was that more civilized American tendency to know every one worth knowing, which is still largely confined, so they tell me, to Washington and New York. Where her mother had withdrawn Annette went forward. Her _flair_ for the important or the soon to be important was unerring. Hers was one of the few drawing-rooms through which every one interesting, both domestic and foreign, was bound at some time to pass. Being frankly and unrestrainedly curious, she kept in touch with the small as well as with the great, with the young as well as with the old, maintaining an enormous correspondence, and getting out of her correspondents every ounce of entertainment they could yield her. On her side she repaid them by often lending them a helping hand. The warmth of her greeting now was due not to the fact that I was her cousin, but to her belief that I had been up to something. It was always those who had been up to something with whom she was most eager to come heart to heart. Without temptations of her own, as far as I could ever see, she got from the indiscretions of others the same sort of pleasure that a scientist finds in studying the wrigglings of microbes under a microscope. Having some inkling of this, I answered her questions not untruthfully, but with reservations, saying that I had not come to see her because I had been down on my luck. “And how did you come to be down on your luck?” “Can’t you guess?” “You don’t look it now.” “I’ve been doing better lately. I’ve made two or three friends who’ve given me a hand.” Carrying the attack in her direction, I asked, “How did you hear that I was in New York?” “Hilda Grace told me. She said you’d been working on that memorial of hers. She thought it awfully strange—you won’t think me rude in repeating it?—that a man like you should be only in a secondary position.” “If she knew how glad I was to get that—” She changed the subject abruptly. “When did you last hear from home?” I thought it sufficient to say: “Not for a long time. I may as well admit that nowadays I never hear from home at all.” “And, if it’s not a rude question, why don’t you?” “Partly, I suppose, because I don’t write.” “So I understood from Jack. But, Frank dear, do you think it kind?” I broke in with the question, the answer to which I had really come to get, “When did you last see Jack?”