There is always war between the women who are gentlemen's favourites and those who are not; and if the last dislike the first, the first despise the last, and go out of their way to provoke them; a thing not difficult to do when a woman gives her mind to it. A gentlemen's favourite is generally attacked on the score of her morality, not to speak of her manners, which are pronounced as bad as they can be; while, how pretty soever men may think her, her own sex decry her, and pick her to pieces with such effect that they do not leave her a single charm. She is assumed to be incapable of anything like real earnestness of feeling; of anything like true womanliness of sentiment; to be ignorant of the higher rules of modesty; to be fast or sly, according to her speciality of style; and if you listen to her dissector you will find in time that she has every fault incidental to a frail humanity, while her noblest virtue is in all probability a 'kind of good nature' which does not count for much. In return, the favourite sneers at the wallflower, whom she calls stupid and spiteful, and whom she rejoices to annoy by the excess of her popularity; nothing pleasing her so much as to make herself look worse than she is in the way of men's liking--except it be to carry off the one tup lamb belonging to a wallflower, and brand him as of her own multitudinous herd. The quarrel is a deadly one as regards the combatants, but it has very little effect on the 'ring;' for, notwithstanding the faults and frailties of which they hear so much, the men flock round the one and make her the public favourite of the set. But, as the valid result, probably the prize match of the circle chooses a stupid wallflower for life; and the favourite who has ridiculed the successful prizeholder scores of times, and who would give ten years of her life to be in her place, has to swallow her confusion as she best can, and accept her discomfiture as if she liked it.