Some people mysteriously inspire confidences, and Mrs. Meanwell has always done so, and even more now that she is a woman-of-the-world than when she was an unsophisticated school-girl. She has an amazing gift of dissimulation, which would be invaluable to an actress or a diplomatist, but which is of immense aid in cultivating that reputation for sympathy which is essential to the vocation of a “dearest friend.” She is able absolutely to absorb herself—to all outward appearance—in conversation with the person who is her companion for the time being, to seem to be interested in nothing else in the world beyond the topic of their talk, while all the time, perhaps, she is really calculating the favourable impression she has made upon the other person, and deciding how uncongenial that other is to her. But her stock of gossip and her range of personal experience have increased the while, as her sympathetic influence has widened. She has prepared the way to be “dearest friend” to her recent companion, if she chose, and though she may have no desire for this, she is content with the sense of her power. [Illustration] I have often watched Mrs. Meanwell with infinite curiosity and amusement, and seen her, within brief periods, receiving the voluminous confidences of two women I knew to be jealous foes, and I have wondered how she was able to maintain such intimate and seemingly affectionate relations with both. But the secret lies in her pliable temperament, which she can temporarily assimilate to the idiosyncrasies of any person with whom she comes in contact. I have seen her apparently interested by men and women from whose tedious society I would commit almost any enormity to escape, and, I must say, from a philanthropic point of view, I have admired Mrs. Meanwell for this comprehensive amiability which could rescue these people from the awful consequences of their own boredom. I have admired it in the same way that I admire women who nurse the sick and solace the afflicted. She is a kind of Florence Nightingale among the dull and the bored, and a beautiful beneficence is hers—mentally cheering those who through their own inherent dulness cannot possibly cheer themselves. But, just as you hear hospital nurses and workers in the slums say they actually love their work, so does Mrs. Meanwell really find amusement even among the bores. She is, of course, fond of hearing herself talk—who is not that has anything to say?—and she certainly glories in extending her popularity.