This mysteriousness was rather increased in its effect, and her position wholly established at the annual fancy ball given the last week of her stay at the springs.
During the whole of that season the United States Hotel had been kept in a state of delightful commotion by the rivalry of two leaders in the fashionable world, who had taken up their head-quarters in that noble establishment.
Never was a warfare carried on with such amiable bitterness, such caressing home-thrusts. Everything was done regally, and with that sublime politeness which duellists practice when most determined to exterminate each other. Of course, each lady had her position and her followers, and no military chieftains ever managed their respective forces more adroitly.
Mrs. Nash was certainly the oldest incumbent, and had a sort of preëmption right as a fashionable leader. She had won her place exactly as her husband had obtained his wealth, first plodding his way from the work-shop to the counting-room, thence into the stock market, where, by two or three dashing speculations worthy of the gambling-table, and entered upon in the same spirit, he became a millionaire.
Exactly by the same method Mrs. Nash worked her way upward as a leader of ton. Originally uneducated and assuming, she had exercised unbounded sway over her husband's work-people, patronizing their wives, and practising diligently the airs that were to be transferred with her husband's advancement into higher circles.
Through the rapid gradations of her husband's fortune, she held her own in the race, and grew important, dressy, and presuming, but not a whit better informed or more refined. When her husband became a millionaire, she made one audacious leap into the midst of the upper ten thousand, hustled her way upward, and facing suddenly about, proclaimed herself a leader in the fashionable world.
People looked on complacently. Some smiled in derision; some sneered with scorn; others, too indolent or gentle for dispute, quietly admitted her charms; while to that portion of society worth knowing, she retained her original character—that of a vulgar, fussy, ignorant woman, from whom persons of refinement shrunk instinctively. Thus, through the forbearance of some, the sneers of others, and the carelessness of all, she fought her way to a position which soon became legitimate and acknowledged.
But this year Mrs. Nash met with a very formidable rival, who disputed the ground she had usurped inch by inch. If Mrs. Nash was insolent, Mrs. Sykes was sly and fascinating. With tact that was more than a match for any amount of arrogant presumption, and education which gave keenness to art, founded upon the same hard purpose and coarse-grained character that distinguished Mrs. Nash, she was well calculated to make a contest for fashionable superiority, exciting and piquant.
Women of true refinement never enter into these miserable rivalries for notoriety, but they sometimes look on amused. In this case the ladies were beautifully matched. The audacity of one was met with the artful sweetness of the other. If Mrs. Nash had power and the prestige of established authority, Mrs. Sykes opposed novelty, unmatched art, and a species of serpent-like fascination difficult to cope with; and much to her astonishment, the former lady found her laurels dropping away leaf by leaf before she began to feel them wither.
Always on the alert for partisans, both these ladies had looked upon Mrs. Gordon with calculating eyes. Beautiful, undoubtedly wealthy, and with that slight foreign air—above all, with a title dropping now and then unconsciously from the lips of her servants—she promised to be an auxiliary of immense value to either faction.