Seven years, to such people, was half a century of social experience. They had half a dozen seasons in every year. Still, it was hard work, and not rapid. At a certain point they stuck, as all do. Most people, then, give it up; but patience, Buffon tells us, is genius, and Mrs. Guy Flouncey was, in her way, a woman of genius. Their dinners were, in a certain sense, established: these in return brought them to a certain degree into the dinner world; but balls, at least balls of a high calibre, were few, and as for giving a ball herself, Mrs. Guy Flouncey could no more presume to think of that than of attempting to prorogue Parliament. The house, however, got really celebrated for ‘the best men.’ Mrs. Guy Flouncey invited all the young dancing lords to dinner. Mothers will bring their daughters where there are young lords. Mrs. Guy Flouncey had an opera-box in the best tier, which she took only to lend to her friends; and a box at the French play, which she took only to bribe her foes. They were both at everybody’s service, like Mr. Guy Flouncey’s yacht, provided the persons who required them were members of that great world in which Mrs. Guy Flouncey had resolved to plant herself. Mrs. Guy Flouncey was pretty; she was a flirt on principle; thus she had caught the Marquess of Beaumanoir, who, if they chanced to meet, always spoke to her, which gave Mrs. Guy Flouncey fashion. But Mrs. Guy Flouncey was nothing more than a flirt. She never made a mistake; she was born with strong social instincts. She knew that the fine ladies among whom, from the first, she had determined to place herself, were moral martinets with respect to any one not born among themselves. That which is not observed, or, if noticed, playfully alluded to in the conduct of a patrician dame, is visited with scorn and contumely if committed by some ‘shocking woman,’ who has deprived perhaps a countess of the affections of a husband who has not spoken to her for years. But if the countess is to lose her husband, she ought to lose him to a viscountess, at least. In this way the earl is not lost to ‘society.’