"I know, dearest, how terribly you have suffered," he said in a low voice as he tried to console her. "I know well that your position as a smart woman supplies your enemies with opportunities for wounding your reputation. In the clubs men will, with an idle word, take away a woman's good name, and often think it a huge joke when they hear the despicable calumny repeated. Indeed, it seems an unwritten law nowadays, that the woman who is not talked about and who does not hover between sacraments and scandals, is not to be considered smart. If she gives dinners and supper-parties at the Carlton or Prince's, her name is usually coupled with one of her favourite guests. No woman is really in the running without gossip having ungenerously given her a lover." "Yes," she answered, "that is only too true? Dudley. I know quite well that the happiness of many a smart woman, as well as her domestic comfort has been utterly wrecked by the eternal chatter which follows public entertaining. A short time ago we gave dinners in our own houses, as our mothers used to do; but that is all of the past. The glitter of the big restaurants has attracted us. To be _chic_ one must engage a table at Prince's or the Carlton, smother it with flowers, and dine with one's guests in the full glare of publicity in a hot and crowded room, where the chatter is so incessant that one can scarcely hear one's own voice. The Italian waiters rush through the courses as if they wish to get rid of you at the earliest possible moment; there is clatter, noise, an inordinate perfume of cooked food, and a hasty gobbling up of gastronomic masterpieces. I am compelled to give my dinners amid such surroundings, but how I hate it all! For me it is only an ordeal--just as are your political dinners with your friendly working-men." He smiled as he recollected what he had so often suffered from the "tuppenny smokes" of his constituents. "The restaurant dinner of Aristocrats and Anonymas is a terrible feast," he said. "I suppose the new fashion of entertaining was started by the _nouveaux riches_ because after the public feast there appeared in what are called the fashionable columns of the papers paragraphs, supplied by the restaurants, informing London's millions that Mrs. So-and-So had been entertaining a big party, among the guests at which were Lady Nobody, who was exquisitely dressed in black velvet and old lace, and Lord Somebody, who was looking younger than ever. You know the style."