But Charlie was a smart fellow, wide awake, and it did not take him long to get, as he fancied, _désorienté_. Suddenly, the second or third autumn of his business career, he had given up his reading, dropped his industry and early hours, and, for reasons well known to himself, he became the Charlie Townley known to us and the world. He had almost abandoned Wall Street for the Piccadilly Club and the Park; he dropped out of sight, on ’Change, and reappeared smiling in “society.” And so well did he play his cards, that he, a poor and almost friendless stranger, without money or influence, with but one solitary advantage, that of a name not unknown in New York, had become--it would be premature to say what he had become, or why he did it; like all great generals, he had his strategy, not to be fathomed by the enemy, still less by emulous friends. Let us stick to the what, nor pry into the why or wherefore. What he did, then, was to become the most ineffable dandy in all New York. With perfect clothing and fine linen, the exactly new thing in sticks and hats, and a single eye-glass decorously veiling his intellect and dangerously wide-awake eye, Charlie had become that thing of which the name may change from dandy to _lion_, from buck to swell, from blood to dude, but the nature endureth forever. But this was but dressing the part, it was merely the transformation of the exterior, the _travesti_; it was here that Charlie’s career began. He only spoke to those whom others spoke to, and said only those things that others thought; he preferred married women to the society of maidens, even to the charm of blushing buds; though he selected one or two virgin beauties every season to whom he royally threw an occasional sunbeam of his society. These were always faultless either in family, or in beauty, or in fashion--for Charlie was catholic in his recognition of merit--and they appreciated the word or look he grudgingly accorded them and were duly grateful. Soon, his approval would give a _cachet_ to almost any girl; but careless Charlie was all unconscious; girls were slow, he said. Mrs. Gower, Mrs. Malgam, Mrs. Jacob Einstein, formed his court. With these he reigned; by them he was taken up and formed, and later, by them adored, as the heathen worship the brass or wooden idol they themselves have made. This was at the time when Mrs. G. had gone in for _belles-lettres_; she and Townley read de Musset and Balzac together, and Theophile Gautier’s poems. Who would have supposed that Charlie had ever read de Musset! It was at the same period that Levison Gower, Senior, died, and Mrs. G. adopted the hyphen; there was an English titled family of that name, and she fancied the difference of one vowel would only lend a _vraisemblance_ to the descent; but society saw the joke and called her Lady Levison for all one season. There never had been any Levison in the Gower family; Gower senior’s father had come from Connecticut, and his first name was John Lewis.