Lady Gladys Parchment is one of the most familiar, as she is one of the most admired, figures in London society, and to the ordinary observer she is one of the most happy and fortunate. For is she not exceedingly beautiful? Does she not come of an old and noble family, though it be more distinguished in these hard times for pedigree and nobility, perhaps, than for property? And is she not wedded to a man of splendid fortune and reputation? True he is some twenty years her senior; but then, if he were not, he would hardly be of sufficiently mature age to have attained the dignity of a judgeship, and in this intensely practical age we are obliged to pay a price for everything. In her case, Lady Gladys, the daughter of a poor Irish earl, had to pay for the advantage of marrying a wealthy English judge the price of heavy disparity in years, with its consequences. And was Sir Drury Parchment worth the price? Had Lady Gladys not been born in the purple, so that, by the conventional aspirations of her order, and a kind of fictional duty to her rank and station, she was constrained to make a wealthy marriage or suffer social obscurity, would she not rather have wedded less advantageously, from a worldly point of view, and more congruously in a heart sense? But it is very difficult for a girl—with little experience of the world beyond the ball-room, the tennis-lawn, and the hunting-field, who cannot possibly realise all that matrimony means—to argue successfully against the logic of wealth and position, when her heart remains an unconcerned auditor. Yet marriage either makes or mars the life of the individual, it cannot leave it _in statu quo_, but must either complete or disintegrate it. Irrespective of material fortune, the life of a man or woman may be adjudged a success or a failure according as it is blessed with the right mate or cursed with the wrong one. So long as it remains actually mateless, and without the response of love, it is simply unfinished. Now, when a beautiful and brilliant woman, with apparently every worldly advantage at her command, takes a pessimistic view of life, and assumes a cynical attitude towards the world, you may be sure that she has married the wrong man, and made a failure of her life. And you cannot converse long and familiarly with Lady Gladys Parchment without perceiving this. Her talk may sparkle with wit, and ripple over with humour, but it will be the keen, biting wit of the cynic, the bitter humour of the pessimist, and there is no mistaking it for the pleasantry of cheerful content. Her sarcasm has a grim laughter in it, but it is as the mocking laughter of disappointed genius when it hears superficial talent winning the popular plaudits. In society Lady Gladys shines because of her personal and mental gifts, she loves society simply for the enjoyment of conquest which it affords, and this has to make up for so much else in her life. Indeed, she finds so little else in life at all.