Page:In a winter city, by Ouida.djvu/175

 generation and the way to mount into "La Haute."

Why they wanted to get there no mortal could tell; they had no children, and were both middle-aged; but no doubt, if you have not been used to them, the cards of countesses are as balm in Gilead, and to see a fashionable throng come up your staircase is to have attained the height of human desire.

At any rate, the Joshua B. Postiches had set their souls on this sort of social success, and they achieved it; receiving at their parties many distinguished and infinitely bored personages who had nothing to do in Floralia, and would have cut them in Paris, Vienna, or London, with the blandest and blankest stare of unconsciousness.

Madame Mila was on the point of adding herself to those personages.

"I must go to the ball," she said. "Oh, it will be the best thing of the season except Nina Trasimene's—I must go to the ball—but then I can't endure to know the woman."

"Can't you go without knowing her?" said the Lady Hilda. "That has been done"