That Armitage dinner was _the_ event of Edna’s life. She had been born; she had married; she had given birth--all memorable and important occurrences. But this formal début in fashionable society topped them as the peak tops the foothills. Having seen her quivering and hysterical excitement when we were leaving the house, I feared a breakdown. I marveled at her apparent calmness and ease as we entered the dining room of the Armitages. Never had she looked so well. If Mrs. Armitage had not been a self-satisfied beauty of the dark type she might have demolished Edna’s dream in its very realizing. But no doubt Edna, the shrewd, had duly measured Hilda Armitage and had discovered that it was safe to make her proud of the woman she had taken under protection and patronage. There were but a dozen people in all at the dinner. It did not seem to be much of an affair. The drawing-room was plain--nothing gaudy, nothing costly looking. Our own dining room was much grander--to our then uneducated taste. The guests were--just people--simple, good-natured mortals, perfectly at their ease and putting us at our ease. You would have wondered, after five minutes of that company, how anyone could possibly find any difficulty in getting intimately acquainted with them. But, as Edna knew at a glance, she and I were in the midst of the innermost and smallest circle of the many circles one within another that make up New York fashionable society. If on the recommendation of the Armitages we should have the good fortune to be accepted by that circle of circles, that circle within the circles, there would be nothing of a social nature left for us to conquer in New York. I was ignorant of all this at the time; had I known, I imagine I should have remained tranquil. But Edna knew at a glance; she had been studying these matters for years. It shows what force of character she had that she conducted herself as if it were the most ordinary and familiar occasion of her life. She had always said, even away back in the days of the grand forty-dollars-a-month flat in Passaic, that she belonged at the social top. She was undoubtedly right. The way she acted when she arrived there proved it. You do not often have the chance, gentle reader, to get so well acquainted with any human being as I have enabled you to get with Edna. Probably you do not even know yourself so well. Therefore I suspect that you have a wholly false notion of her--think her in every way much worse relatively than she was. Through your novels and through the reports your dim eyes bring to your narrow and shallow mind, you have acquired certain habits of judging your fellow beings.