Ladies Must Live

								


LADIES MUST LIVE

LADIES MUST LIVE



                                BY

                         ALICE DUER MILLER

             Author of “Come Out of the Kitchen,” etc.



                          ILLUSTRATED BY

                            PAUL MEYLAN

              NEW YORK

                          THE CENTURY CO.

                               1917

                        Copyright, 1917, by

                          The Century Co.



                        Copyright, 1917, by

                    INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE CO.



                    Published, October, 1917

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

                                                              PAGE


She stopped with her hand on the banister, like
Louise of Prussia                                 Frontispiece


And then, with a clean towel, he deliberately
dried her hands, finger by finger                             69


“Isn’t that rather a reckless way for a man in
your situation to talk?”                                      91


“Well, heaven itself can’t save a fool,” said Mrs.
Almar                                                        119


It was arranged that he was to bring Dorothy to
dine with them that evening                                  147


He stood like a rock under her caress                        173


“May I ask, Mr. Riatt, what rights in the matter
you consider that you have?” Linburne pursued                199


“Max,” she said, “I love you”                                241

CHAPTER I

Mrs. Ussher was having a small house party in the country over New
Year’s Day. This is equivalent to saying that the half dozen most
fashionable people in New York were out of town.
Certain human beings are admitted to have a genius for discrimination
in such matters as objects of art, pigs or stocks. Mrs. Ussher had
this same instinct in regard to fashion, especially where fashions
in people were concerned. She turned toward hidden social availability
very much as the douser’s hazel wand turns toward the hidden spring.
When she crossed the room to speak to some woman after dinner,
whatever that woman’s social position might formerly have been, you
could be sure that at present she was on the upward wing. When Mrs.
Ussher discovered extraordinary qualities of mind and sympathy in
some hitherto impossible man, you might be certain it was time to
begin to book him in advance.
Not that Mrs. Ussher was a kingmaker; she herself had no more
power over the situation than the barometer has over the weather.
She merely was able to foretell; she had the sense of approaching
social success.
She was unaware of her own powers, and really supposed that her