me one of the features of the Season.
In rooms arranged tastefully in an Oriental style, with curtains,
hangings, delicately worked embroideries, woven mats of charming
design and tropical plants, she welcomes the throng who come at her
invitation. She moves by degrees. Contenting herself at first with a
small _charge d'affaires_ or a Corean plenipotentiary, she soon
rises to a fully fledged Ambassador and a bevy of secretaries and
_attaches_. Her triumph culminates when she secures a deposed monarch
and his consort. She is clever, and knows well that those whom she
seeks to entice will overlook their own ignorance with regard to her
if only they can be certain of being amused and interested in her
house. She, therefore, contrives, without transgressing the higher
_convenances_, to banish all ceremonial stiffness from her parties,
and to import in its place an atmosphere of cheerful gaiety and
musical refinement. For, whatever she may have once been, there can
be no doubt that when London makes her acquaintance she possesses, not
only charming manners, but innumerable accomplishments which are as
salt to the jaded palate of Society people. Thus she progresses from
season to season, and from success to success.

In her second year she becomes a favoured guest in many country
houses, where an effort is made to relieve the tedium of daily
shooting parties by nightly frivolities. Soon afterwards she is
presented at Court, and becomes herself a patroness to many foreigners
who desire by the exercise of their talents to make a precarious
living in England. By these she is considered to be one of the suns
from which the great world draws its light and warmth. In her third
Season she is sufficiently secure to introduce into Society her
daughter, aged eighteen, who has hitherto (so she will inform her
friends) been receiving a good education abroad. Accompanied by "my
little girl," she may be seen, on fine afternoons, reclining in her
spick and span Victoria, in the midst of the crowd in the Ladies'
Mile. She is thus hedged round with a respectability which not even
indiscreet inquiries after her late husband (for it is understood that
he died and left her in comfort many years before) can disturb. She
permits herself occasionally, it is true, to join _chic_ parties at
fashionable restaurants, but these, since they are often under titled
patronage, can scarcely be considered serious lapses from propriety.
After having herself p