Major Mayfair Smartly’s new regiment was stationed at Aldershot, therefore his wife arranged that she should take an elegant flat in Mayfair, and that he should come up to town constantly, attend her at any dinners, receptions, or balls to which she might be going, and return to Aldershot by the early morning train in time for parade. She was soon in the very whirl of Society, and her pretty face and ready wit were attracting attention; but her actual fame as a beauty dated, I think, from one afternoon at Hurlingham. She had been presented at the last drawing-room, and an illustrious personage had made special inquiries about her on account of her good looks. This fact had, of course, reached her, and gladdened her immeasurably, and she was, therefore, in no way surprised when at Hurlingham that afternoon she received a gracious intimation of the Prince’s desire to make her acquaintance. The presentation took place in the presence of a representative Society gathering, and for the rest of the afternoon she was honoured of royalty. After that eventful day, people began to speak of “the new beauty”; the photographers invited her to sit to them, which she did in every instance, and the journalists began to take particular note of her doings, and of her clothes. Henceforth Mrs. Mayfair Smartly was a social notability; her presence could lend distinction to any party, and her custom could make the fortune of any dressmaker, for she knew how to dress. This may sound trivial and frivolous, but I am not one of those who profess to think lightly of women for paying much attention to their dress. I have invariably found that those women who really understand the art of dress, who know what to wear and how and when to wear it, possess taste and intelligence of a more refined order than those who regard costume in the light of mere clothing, and who not only reveal no appreciation of a woman’s obligation to look her best at all times, but affect to treat dress altogether as a subject fit only for the attention of frivolous minds. Charles Lamb said he hated a man who swallowed his food affecting not to know what he was eating. He suspected his taste in higher matters. So, when I hear a woman-of-the-world say she does not care how she looks, or what she wears, I feel pretty sure she is a woman of no taste, in spite of possibly much intellectual pretension, and that she is lacking in personal charm. When a woman says she leaves her costume to her dressmaker, I know that she has no mind of her own, no invention, no resource, no sense of the fitness of things, and that, however beautiful a gown her dressmaker may provide her with, she herself is sure to wear some incongruous hat or cloak, gloves or shoes, which will disturb the harmony of her appearance, and so assert her own ignorance.