CHAPTER IVBarry Govett was the most prominent bachelor in New York society. I had been reading about him in the papers for years. His name regularly headed the list of men present at every fashionable entertainment, and one was continually being informed of his visiting this great person or that in Newport, Saratoga, Lenox, Tuxedo and Palm Beach. Prominent as he was at this time, he must have been still more prominent a few years ago when the cotillon was still a feature of every ball. I have always wondered what a cotillon was. Barry Govett was the cotillon leader par excellence. They said then that one had to engage him months ahead.
All this I had gathered from the gossip weeklies, which, like every other stenographer whose social life was limited to a boarding-house, I used to read wi
