dents.

It is impossible, therefore, that the men who are her friends should
treat her with that chivalrous respect which an obsolete tradition would
seem to require, but they suffer no loss of her esteem in consequence.
Such being her behaviour in the society of men, the tone of her daily
conversation with friends of her own sex may be readily imagined, though
it might not be pleasant to describe. Suffice it to say, that she sees
no shame in addressing them, or in allowing herself to be addressed by a
name which a Court of law has held to be libellous when applied to a
burlesque actress. She is always at Hurlingham or the Ranelagh, and has
seen pigeons killed without a qualm. She never misses a Sandown or a
Kempton meeting; she dazzles the eyes of the throng at Ascot every year,
and never fails at Goodwood.

Twice a year the Giddy Lady is compelled by the traditions of her caste
to visit Paris, in order to replenish her exhausted wardrobe. On these
occasions she patronises only the best hotel, and the most expensive and
celebrated of men-dressmakers, and she is "fitted" by a son of the
house, of whom she talks constantly and familiarly by his Christian name
as JEAN, or PIERRE, or PHILIPPE. During the shooting season she goes
from country-house to country-house. She has been seen sometimes with a
gun in her hands, often with a lighted cigarette between her lips.
Indeed she is too frequent a visitor at shooting-luncheons and in
smoking-rooms, where a woman, however much she may attempt to disguise
her sex, is never cordially welcomed by men. The conventions of the
society in which she moves seem to require that she should be attended
during her visits by a _cavaliere servente_, who is therefore always
invited with her. Their pastime is to imitate a flirtation, and to
burlesque love, but neither of them is ever deceived into attributing
the least reality to this occupation, which is often as harmless as it
is always absurd.

These and similar occupations, of course, leave her no time to attend to
her children, who are left to grow up as best they may under the
fostering care of nursery-maids and of such relations as may choose,
from time to time, to burden themselves with the olive-branches of
others. Her husband has long since retired from all competition with
her, and leaves her free to follow her own devices, whilst he himself
follows the odds. She is often supposed to be riding for a fall. It is
certain that her pa