One of the features of the bazaar was the Stage Stall. Mr. Beake had got most of the best known actors and actresses to take part. It was a huge success; the people were three deep round the stall, crushing to see the professionals; they sold everything. It was rather odd to observe the stall immediately next to the stage one. Lady Hildegarde Merrioneath presided, and was assisted by some young and pretty girls. The crowd did not know who they were, and they hardly sold a thing. Lady Hildegarde, who is the most refined and aristocratic woman I know, with that mixture of Vere de Vere and sweetness which so often marks our best born women, stood in the back of her stall, looking rather amused at the complete desertion of it. Here was the type of the real aristocrat, the real great lady, and the _parvenus_ couldn't see it! I felt like telling the people that they were blind and fools, that if they had any taste, any appreciation, any refinement, all the other stalls would be deserted to overwhelm Lady Hildegarde's. Mr. Beake, running about with a china pig in his hands, which he was trying to raffle, noticed that Lady Hildegarde was not a success, and he actually had the impudence to patronise her. I suppose his vulgar commercial head was turned with the thought that the bazaar was his work, and that his wife was side by side with a real live duchess. Lady Hildegarde replied with some conventional remark, and her smile seemed to me more amused than ever, as if it were all very funny and not worth being angry about. For, after all, she was Lady Hildegarde Merrioneath, and Mr. Beake was only Mr. Beake, and his actors and actresses stars whose lights went out. I shall never forget the picture Lady Hildegarde made in her deserted stall, side by side with the crowded booth of the actors. It made me think of the French Revolution, and the noblesse going to the guillotine in the tumbrils, so far above her surroundings, was Lady Hildegarde. {_The Existing Régime_} A little more pushing and shoving and playing the "Charity trick," and Mr. and Mrs. Beake will be like the Vane-Corduroys, if, for all I know, they are not already _rangé_. But, as Blanche said, the sentiments that pervade the mind of Mr. Beake and his kidney are the mainstay of our national life and the existing régime, and it doesn't do to guard the portals to the high born too closely. As a future marchioness, I pray you shudder when you read the Sunday papers at Chevenix Castle with the detailed account of Mr. Beake's bazaar. Blanche and I bought nothing, nor did the few of our set who were there, which as usual left the charity to the crowd.