She nodded and dismissed him. She was on fairly good terms with her husband, and would make common cause with him when it suited her; but she could not stand much of his society. She took another prolonged stare through her eye-glass at the large pale woman, so splendidly attired, sitting in solitude under the tree, then rose and walked away in her graceful and nonchalant fashion, with her knot of young men around her. She was followed by the dreary envious gaze of the lonely lady whose countenance had been likened to a large whitey-brown paper bag. “If one could but get to know _her_ all the rest would come easy,” thought that solitary and unhappy outsider, looking longingly after that pliant and perfect figure with its incomparable air of youth, of sovereignty, and of indifference. What was the use of having an income second only to Vanderbilt’s and Pullman’s? There are things which cannot be purchased. Manner is chief amongst them. Margaret Massarene was very lonely indeed, as she sat under the big tree watching the gay, many-colored, animated crowd amongst which there was not a creature with whom she had even a bowing acquaintance. Her lord and master, of whom she stood in much awe, was away on business in Frankfort; her daughter, her only living child, was in India; she was here because it was the proper place for an aspirant to society to be in at that season; but of all this multitude of royal people, titled people, pretty people, idle people, who thronged the alleys and crowded the hotels, she did not know a single creature. She envied her own maid who had many acquaintances with other maids and couriers and smart German sergeants and corporals of cavalry. On the previous day she had made also a fatal mistake. As she had crossed the hall of her own hotel, she had seen a fair small woman, insignificantly dressed, in a deer-stalker’s hat and a gray ulster, who was arguing with the cashier about an item in her bill which she refused to pay: so many kreutzer for ice; ice was always given gratis, she averred; and she occupied the whole window of the cashier’s bureau as she spoke, having laid down an umbrella, a packet of newspapers, and a mackintosh on the shelf. Indignant at being made to wait by such a shabby little person, Mrs. Massarene pushed her aside. “Folks as has to count pence shouldn’t come to grand hotels,” she muttered, with more reason than politeness, elbowing away the shabby fair woman.