It is well known that the sacred fire of fashion burns--or is supposed to burn--in Belgravia alone. Its warmth drew her irresistibly. Bayswater became too cold to hold her, and early in the following year it was announced that a large house in the purlieus of Grosvenor Square had been purchased by her husband. However, she was content to climb by degrees, and, in her first season of social brilliancy, she restricted herself to a small and early dance, and a musical evening. At the dance, universal admiration was excited by the lavish profusion of the flowers with which her staircase was adorned, by the excellent quality of the champagne, and the inexhaustible supply of oysters. At the musical evening the music was as admirably rendered as it was completely neglected. And at both parties only those people were present as to whose social status and absolute "rightness" there could be no question. Indeed the dancer, whose foot had been trodden upon at the former, might console herself with the thought that none but a noble boot had caused her pain; while at the latter the sounds of heavy breathing, which mingled inharmoniously with Mlle. FALSETTI's _bravura_, were forgiven, in consideration of the exalted rank of their producer. Her success seemed now to be assured, and even the muttered discontent of a neglected husband, who was foolish enough to prefer comfort to smartness, began to subside. In the following year her entertainments became even more splendid, and less comfortable. She took a house at Ascot, and, triumph of triumphs! a scion of Royalty deigned to accept her hospitality. After this, one would have supposed that she might have reposed for a space. But the penalty of social life is its never-ending necessity for movement. Jealous rivals abound to dispute a hardly-won supremacy, and the least sign of faltering may involve extinction. Yet it must be said that she is kind to her own, even when she is most brilliant. She brings out a daughter to be the delight of young Guardsmen, and marries her to a widowed Peer; she furbishes up forgotten relations, and allows them to shine in the rays of her glory; she is charitable after the manner of fancy fairs, and the hospitality of her house becomes proverbial. But, in the midst of all the bustle, the confusion, and the rattling turmoil of her career, she sometimes sighs for the undistinguished ease of her life in the pre-Royal days, sighs, and returns with fresh vigour to the struggle. And so the pleasureless days of the pleasure-seeker follow one another, each with its particular legacy of little strivings, until, at the last, consolation may come from the thought that there is at least one place where there are many mansions, but no social ambitions. * * * * *