So the crash came at last, and it was quite a surprise to poor Mrs. Mayfair Smartly. She was amazed, she could not understand it at all. Why had her husband never told her about it? He treated her like a child, whereas, had he realised that she was a woman, and told her of the financial crisis at hand in their household, she would willingly have made several retrenchments. But now it was too late. Major Mayfair Smartly was obliged to sell out from the army, and sell up the elegant flat in Mayfair. Then he and his wife retired from Society. The beautiful Mrs. Mayfair Smartly no longer figured in the Society journals or the photographers’ shop-windows. Worth’s knew her no more, and she began to entertain an absolute affection for individual dresses because she wore them—those that she had not sold—so frequently. They buried themselves in the country, and she tried to convince herself that she liked rural life. He did, because she was part of it to him—all that he knew of it—and he would have liked existence in Timbuctoo if she had only shared it with him. Now, too, he was relieved of those tiring journeys to Aldershot after balls and receptions, and he had his beloved wife all to himself. But Mrs. Mayfair Smartly was not born for country life, and she felt that she was stagnating. If she could not live in London, in her old set, she would make a set for herself; and if the small remnant of her husband’s income would not support them both in the Metropolis, she must make some money herself. There are many fields of usefulness and profit open to ladies nowadays, she would essay one of them. She knew Society, its ways and persons, why should she not make use of her knowledge, and become a Society journalist? Why should she not write racy sketches of people she had met during her meteoric social career? Few women knew more of dress than she, or had more taste; why should she, then, not employ her pen to impart some of her ideas upon the gentle art of dressing well? It was a happy thought, and Mrs. Mayfair Smartly has returned to town to regard Society from a new point of view. She is now the critic instead of the criticised. The necessity to live has impelled her to industry, and though she would sooner be spending her days in luxurious ease, which is really in accordance with her disposition, she devotes herself assiduously to work. She always had a ready pen, and now she writes clever stories and articles, and, continuing to dress fashionably and harmoniously, though less expensively, she preserves her reputation as a “smart” woman, though it is now many seasons since she was the much-talked-about Mrs. Mayfair Smartly, the beauty of the season. _THE GAMBLING WOMAN_