But I often wonder what Miss Kittenish thinks about when she is alone. She can hardly ask herself conundrums. Can she really persuade herself that she is yet young and fascinating? Can she, at her time of life, find self-delusion so easy? Or does she know the truth, and realise it in solitude? There must be an infinite pathos in the lonely meditations of this skittish old maid, in spite of her invulnerable good nature. And perhaps, after all, one should look with charity upon the parlour-games and the conundrums, for I’m sure Miss Kittenish means well. Nothing bores _her_. _THE “SMART” WOMAN_ Mrs. Mayfair Smartly is still a very beautiful woman; but when I first knew her she was quite lovely, with all the freshness of youth yet impearled upon her cheek, and in her eyes a newly-kindled light of conscious triumph, for her beauty had brought her fame. From the pretty and petted little wife of a gallant and good-natured major of dragoons, she had suddenly become “the beautiful Mrs. Mayfair Smartly,” thanks to the notice of an illustrious personage. Her photographs were in every shop-window, and no social function was considered complete without her. Admirers swarmed around her wherever she went; and, when she did not put in an appearance anywhere, she was nevertheless talked about—with candour. Mrs. Mayfair Smartly had been married three or four years before she became really “somebody.” Her husband, Major Mayfair Smartly, was a typical cavalry officer—a tall, well-built man, of the Anglo-Saxon breed, who would lead a forlorn hope or ride a steeplechase with equal readiness and self-possession, a man who loved luxury and ease, but would be dangerous in the face of an enemy. As it happened, however, all his military service had been peaceful, and even in India he had never had the chance of serving on one of the periodical punitive expeditions, for his wife did not let him stay there long enough. She did not like India, it injured her complexion, so she insisted on his exchanging into a regiment at home. He never refused her anything, and, after all, “there is no place like home”; so, having exhausted all the complimentary adjectives of the reporters of the local Indian papers, and furnished as much _gup_ for Simla and Calcutta coteries as propriety would permit, pretty Mrs. Mayfair Smartly, accompanied by her husband, bade farewell to Indian society, and sighing for new fields to conquer, made for London. [Illustration]