the _demi-monde_ far more
than she abhors them. She sees them gorgeously attired and sumptuously
appointed, and she knows them to be flattered, feted, and courted with a
certain disdainful admiration of which she catches only the admiration
while she ignores the disdain. They have all for which her soul is
hungering, and she never stops to reflect at what a price they have
bought their gains, and what fearful moral penalties they pay for their
sensuous pleasures. She sees only the coarse gilding on the base token,
and shuts her eyes to the hideous figure in the midst, and the foul
legend written around the edge.

It is this envy of the pleasures, and indifference to the sins, of these
women of the _demi-monde_ which is doing such infinite mischief to the
modern girl. They brush too closely by each other, if not in actual
deeds, yet in aims and feelings; for the luxury which is bought by vice
with the one is the thing of all in life most passionately desired by
the other, though she is not yet prepared to pay quite the same price.
Unfortunately, she has already paid too much, all, indeed, that once
gave her distinctive national character. No one can say of the modern
English girl that she is tender, loving, retiring, or domestic. The old
fault so often found by keen-sighted Frenchwomen, that, she was so
fatally _romanesque_, so prone to sacrifice appearances and social
advantages for love, will never be set down to the girl of the period.
Love, indeed, is the last thing she thinks of, and the least of the
dangers besetting her. Love in a cottage, that seductive dream which
used to vex the heart and disturb the calculations of prudent mothers,
is now a myth of past ages. The legal barter of herself for so much
money, representing so much dash, so much luxury and pleasure; that is
her idea of marriage; the only idea worth entertaining.

For all seriousness of thought respecting the duties or the consequences
of marriage, she has not a trace. If children come, they find but a
stepmother's cold welcome from her; and if her husband thinks that he
has married anything that is to belong to him--a _tacens et placens
uxor_ pledged to make him happy--the sooner he wakes from his
hallucination and understands that he has simply married some one who
will condescend to spend his money on herself, and who will shelter her
indiscretions behind the shield of his name, the less severe will be his
disappointment. She has married his hou