Scarcely had she been received amongst them, when Mr. Leslie Winyard, being at the moment _desœuvré_, conceived that she was just put in his way as a fit play-thing for the hour, and without the least scruple he determined she should swell the list of his conquests, already as numerous as those of Don Giovanni in all lands. He took no pains to conceal this design from any one save herself, and his intentions served many of the set as a topic of conversation, a fit subject for betting on: "how would Glenmore take the thing; would he be a wise man or a fool--put on the cap which fitted him with a good grace, or make grimaces at it?" Such is the license with which the most serious delinquencies were talked over, and though when set down on paper they may seem exaggerated, yet certainly the fact is not in the least so; only people start at things and actions when called by their right names, which under the title of venial errors, youthful indiscretions, and the sanction of custom and habit, are certainly tolerated, if not commended; _tacitly_ approved, if not openly avowed. Ought not such a desperate system to be analyzed? Ought not language to pourtray in its strongest terms those deeds and those manners which, under the semblance of polite terms, and fictitious representation, and deceptive elegancies, pass current as being harmless or indifferent. Let those whose hearts have bled on the shrine of fashion and of _ton_--who have mourned the loss of all that was valuable in character, or beautiful in mental existence, sacrificed to the insatiable appetite of pleasure, the degrading occupations of frivolous pursuit,--let _them_ say if colours can be too deep, or language too strong, to paint so destructive an evil as that of the whole false, futile system of the exclusiveness of _ton_. Lady Glenmore was evidently one of those persons marked out to become its victim, and when the character of Mr. Leslie Winyard is taken into account, as being the man who attempted above all others to lead her to her ruin, it cannot be wondered at, circumstanced as she was, that the pit of degradation yawned at her feet. Mr. Winyard was one of those who to the gentlest manners united the hardest of hearts: he had not, perhaps, always merited such a description; but the being who lives entirely for pleasure, becomes gradually hardened to every natural sentiment, and selfishness is the invariable consequence of a life of idle dissipation. From selfishness springs every other evil, and as it is the meanest of all principles of action, when considered in the baldness of the term, so it is, perhaps, the most common, and the one which above all others no person will like to avow--no, not even Mr. Leslie Winyard.