So it came about quite naturally that the little unknown cousin of the Melroses was made a familiar figure in their different family groups, and friends of the house grew accustomed to finding pretty little Norma Sheridan lunching with Leslie, reading beside Alice's couch in the late summer afternoons, or amusing and delighting the old head of the family in a hundred charming ways. Norma called Mrs. Melrose "Aunt Marianna" now, as Chris and Acton did. She did not understand the miracle, it remained a marvel still, but it was enough that it continued to deepen and spread with every enchanted hour.

She had longed—what girl in Biretta's Bookstore did not?—to be rich, and to move and have her being "in society." And now she had her wish, a hundred times fulfilled, and of course she was utterly and absolutely happy.

That is, except for the momentary embarrassments and jealousies and uncertainties, and for sometimes being bored, she thought that she might consider herself happy. And there were crumpled rose-leaves everywhere! she reminded herself sternly. She—Norma Sheridan—could spend more money upon the single item of shoes, for example, than Miss Smith, head of Biretta's Bookshop, could earn in a whole long year of hot months and cold, of weary days and headachy days. That part of it was "fun", she admitted to herself. The clothes were fun, the boxes and boxes and boxes that came home for her, the petticoats and stockings, the nightgowns heavy with filet lace, and the rough boots for tramping and driving, and the silk and satin slippers for the house. Nothing disappointing there! Norma never would forget the ecstasies of those first shopping trips with Aunt Marianna. Did she want them?—the beaded bag, the woolly scarf, the little saucy hat, were all to be sent to Miss Sheridan, please. Norma lost her breath, and laughed, and caught it again and lost it afresh. They had so quickly dropped the little pretence that she was to make herself useful, these wonderful and generous Melroses; they had so soon forgotten everything except that she was Leslie's age, and to be petted and spoiled as if she had been another Leslie!

And now, after more than half a year, she knew that they liked her; that all of them liked her in their varying degrees. Old Mrs. Melrose and Alice—Mrs. Christopher Liggett—were most warmly her champions, perhaps, but Leslie was too unformed a character to be definitely hostile, and the little earlier jealousies and misunderstandings were blown away long ago, and even the awe-inspiring Annie had shown a real friendliness of late. Acton Liggett and Hendrick von Behrens were always kind and admiring, and Norma had swiftly captivated Annie's little boys. But of them all, she still liked Chris Liggett the best, and felt nearest Chris even when he scolded her, or hurt her feelings with his frank advice. And she knew that Chris thoroughly liked her, in spite of the mistakes that she was continually making, and the absurd ways in which her ignorance and strangeness still occasionally betrayed her.

It had been a time full of mistakes, of course. Chris often told her that she had more brains in her little finger than most of the girls of her set had in their whole bodies, but that had not saved her. If she was pretty, they were all pretty, too. If she wore beautiful clothes, they wore clothes just as beautiful, and with more assurance. If her wit was quick, and her common sense and human experience far greater than theirs, these were just the qualities they neither needed nor trusted. They spoke their own language, the language of youthful arrogance and ignorance, the language of mutual compliments and small personalities, and Norma could not speak this tongue any more than she could join them when they broke easily into French or German or Italian. She could ride, because she was not afraid of the mild-mannered cobs that were used at the riding school and in the park, but she knew little of correct posture and proper handling of reins. She could swim, as Wolf had taught her, in the old river years ago, but she knew nothing of the terms and affectations of properly taught swimming. When she went to see Aunt Kate, she was almost ashamed of the splendour of her clothing and the utter luxury of the life she led, but with Leslie and her friends she often felt herself what perhaps they thought her, an insignificant little poor relation of the Melroses, who had appeared from nobody knew where, and might return unchallenged at any moment to her original obscurity.

This phase of the new life was disappointing, and Norma realized herself that she spent a quite disproportionate amount of time in thinking about it. Wasn't it enough, she would ask herself impatiently, to be one of them at all, to see one's picture in the fashionable weeklies, as a member of the family, at the Liggett-Melrose wedding; to have clothes and motor-cars, and a bedroom that was like a picture; to know Newport at first-hand; to have cruised for a week in the Craigies' yacht, and have driven to Quebec and back in the Von Behrens' car? A year ago, she reminded herself, it would have seemed Paradise to have had even a week's freedom from the bookshop; now, she need never step into Biretta's again!

But it was not enough, and Norma would come impatiently to the end of her pondering with the same fretted sense of dissatisfaction. It was not enough to be tremulously praised by old Aunt Marianna, to be joked by Chris, greeted by Alice, his wife, with a friendly smile. Norma wanted to belong to this life, to be admired and sought by Leslie, rather than endured; to have the same easy familiarity with Duers, and Alexanders, and Rutgers that Leslie had.

As was quite natural, she and Leslie had eyed each other, from the very beginning, somewhat as rivals. But Leslie, even then preparing for her marriage, had so obviously held all the advantages, that her vague resentment and curiosity concerning the family's treatment of the unknown newcomer were brief. If Aunt Alice liked Norma to come in and talk books and write notes, if Chris chose to be gallant, if Grandma lavished an unusual affection upon this new protÉgÉe, well, it robbed Leslie of nothing, after all.

But with Norma it was different. She was brought into sharp contact with another girl, only slightly her senior, who had everything that this new turn of fortune had given Norma herself, and a thousand times more. Norma saw older women, the important and influential matrons of the social world, paying court to the promised wife of Acton Liggett. Norma knew that while Alice and Chris were always attentive to her own little affairs, the solving of Leslie's problems they regarded as their own sacred obligation. Norma had hours and hours of this new enchanting leisure to fill; she could be at anybody's beck and call. But Leslie, she saw, was only too busy. Everybody was claiming Leslie; she was needed in forty places at once; she must fly from one obligation to another, and be thanked for sparing just a few minutes here and there from her crowded days.

Mrs. Melrose had immediately made Norma an allowance, an allowance so big that when Norma first told Aunt Kate about it, it was with a sense of shame. Norma had her check-book, and need ask nobody for spending money. More than that her generous old patron insisted that she use all the family charge accounts freely: "You mustn't think of paying in any shop!" said Aunt Marianna and Aunt Alice, earnestly.

But Leslie was immensely rich in her own right. The hour in which Norma realized this was one of real wretchedness. Chris was her innocent informant.

It was only two or three days before the wedding, a warm day of rustling leaves and moving shadows, in late May. The united families were still in town, but plans for escape to the country were made for the very day after the event. Norma had been fighting a little sense of hurt pride because she was not to be included among Leslie's wedding attendants. She knew that Aunt Marianna had suggested it to Leslie, some weeks before, and that the bride had quite justifiably reminded her grandmother that the eight maids, the special maid and matron of honour, and the two little pages, had all been already asked to perform their little service of affection, and that a readjustment now would be difficult. So Norma had been excluded from the luncheons, the discussions of frocks and bouquets, and the final exciting rehearsals in the big Park Avenue church.

She had chanced to be thinking of all these things on the day when Chris made a casual allusion to "needing" Leslie.

"The poor kid has got a stupid morning coming to-morrow, I'm afraid!" he had said, adding, in answer to Norma's raised eyebrows, "Business. She has to sign some papers, and alter her will—and I want all that done before they go away!"

"Has Leslie a will?" Norma had asked.

"My child, what did you suppose she had? Leslie inherited practically all of her Grandfather Melrose's estate. At least, her father, Theodore, did, and Leslie gets it direct through him. Of course your Aunt Annie got her slice, and my wife hers, but the bulk was left to the son. Poor Teddy! he didn't get much out of it. But during her minority the executors—of which I happen to be one—almost doubled it for Leslie. And to-morrow Judge Lee and I have got to go over certain matters with her."

He had been idling at the piano, while Alice dozed in the heat, and Norma played with a magazine. Now he had turned back to his music, and Norma had apparently resumed her reading. But she really had been shaken by a storm of passionate jealousy. Jealousy is in its nature selfish, and the old Norma of Aunt Kate's little group had not been a selfish girl. But Norma had had a few weeks now of a world governed by a different standard. There was no necessity here, none of the pure beauty of sacrifice and service and insufficiency. This was a world of superfluities, a standard of excess. To have merely meals, clothing, comfort, and ease was not enough here. All these must be had in superabundance, and she was the best woman and the happiest who had gowns she could not wear, jewels lying idle, money stored away in banks, and servants standing about uselessly for hours, that the momentary needs of them might be instantly met.

The poison of this creed had reached Norma, in spite of herself. She was young, and she had always been beloved in her own group for what she honestly gave of cheer and service and friendship. It hurt her that nobody needed what she could give now, and she hated the very memory of Leslie's wedding.

But when that was over, Mrs. Melrose had taken her to Newport, whither Alice was carefully moved every June. Leslie was gone now, and Norma free from pricking reminders of her supremacy, and as old friends of Mrs. Melrose began to include her in the summer's merrymaking, she had some happy times. But even here the cloven hoof intruded.

Norma had always imagined this group as being full of friendly women and admiring men, as offering her a hundred friendships where the old life had offered one. She discovered slowly, and with pained surprise, that although there were plenty of girls, they were not especially anxious for intimacy with her, and that the men she met were not, somehow, "real." They were absorbed in amusement, polo and yachting, they moved about a great deal, and they neither had, nor desired to have, any genuine work or interest in life. She began to see Leslie's wisdom in making an early and suitable marriage. As a matron, Leslie was established; she could entertain, she had dignified duties and interests, and while Norma felt awkward and bashful in asking young men to dine with Aunt Marianna, Acton brought his friends to his home, and Leslie had her girl friends there, and the whole thing was infinitely simpler and pleasanter.