and
she is looked upon as the best dancer in London Society.

I can well remember the time when I could easily reckon up the whole
list of my American acquaintances resident in London on the fingers of
one hand, and most of those were the wives of English husbands.

That was certainly not more than ten years ago, and then the majority
of Americans that one chanced to meet in England were travelers, who
knew very little of, and cared less apparently to see or take part in,
the doings of our London society.

In ten years, however, amazing changes can and do take place,
especially where the natives of the States are concerned, and nowadays
I find that not only does it require a great many leaves in my
capacious address book to hold the names of the Americans--and the
women most particularly--who live and move and have a large part of
their social being in London, but that a very impressive majority of
these attractive and prominent ladies are not the life partners of
voting, title-holding British subjects at all.

The good work accomplished both ways by the international marriage
goes merrily on. At the present moment we can claim not less than
twenty-five peeresses of transatlantic birth, while we don't pretend
to keep anything like an exact record of the ever-increasing
acquisitions, from American sources, to our gentry class; but, for all
that, the present big average of American women who come across the
ocean to conduct a successful siege of London no longer regard the
English husband as a sort of necessary preliminary and essential ally
to the business of getting on in our smart metropolitan society.

The fair and welcome invader from the land of the free and the home of
the brave can, and does, "arrive" astonishingly well without masculine
assistance and encouragement.

She may appear as maid, wife or widow; sometimes as divorcee; but,
personally, she conducts her own campaign. Furthermore, she comes
fully equipped to carry everything before her--she has wit, wealth and
good looks at her command, and she works along approved and sensible
lines of action.

If she has a thoroughgoing conquest of London planned out, she does
not put up at a fashionable hotel and spread her fine plumage and wait
for notice.

She usually begins by taking a house; she furnishes it with original
but discreet good taste; she wears startlingly pretty gowns--quite the
best, as a rule, that Paris can supply; she gives the most