She mocked them and derided them. She
regretted aloud the unfortunate marriages of well-born fellows with
actresses and commoners from beyond the pale. Among the first French
words she learned to use was _mesalliance_.
She began to wonder if she had not made one herself. She found
inside the paddock so many men more brilliant than her husband.
There were as many types of man as of woman--the earnest, the
ascetic, the socialistic, the pious youth, wastrels, rakes, fops.
There were richer men than Jim and men of still older family, men
of even greater wealth.
She had been married only a few weeks and she was already
speculating in comparisons! It was a more or less inescapable
result of a marriage for ambition, since each ambition achieved
opens a horizon of further ambitions.
She had a brief spell of delight in the rehearsals of the "Day of
the Bud." She met new people informally and they were all so shy
and self-conscious that they were not inclined to resent Kedzie's
intrusion. Kedzie would once have ridiculed them as "amachoors";
now she wished that she, too, were only an "amaturr" instead of
a reformed professional.
If some of the ladies snubbed her she found others that cultivated
her; a few of the humbler women even toadied to her position; a few
of the men snuggled up to her picturesque beauty. She snubbed them
with vigor. She hated them and felt smirched by their challenges.
That was splendid of her.
She was beginning to find herself and her party, but outside the
circle of Jim's immediate entourage.
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