fugitive regard of a
middle-aged woman of high rank something to be proud of and boasted
about. That she is as old as his own mother--at this moment selling
tapes behind a village counter, or gathering up the eggs in a country
farm--tells nothing against the association with him; and the woman who
began her career of flirtation with the son of a duke ends it with the
son of a shopkeeper, having between these two terms spanned all the
several degrees of degradation which lie between giving and buying.

She cannot help herself; for it is part of the insignia of her
artificial youth to have the reputation of a love affair, or the
pretence of one, if even the reality is a mere delusion. When such a
woman as this is one of the matrons, and consequently one of the leaders
of society, what can we expect from the girls? What worse example could
be given to the young? When we see her with her own daughters we feel
instinctively that she is the most disastrous adviser they could have;
and when in the company of girls or young married women not belonging to
her, we doubt whether we ought not to warn their natural guardians
against allowing such associations, for all that her standing in society
is undeniable, and not a door is shut against her. We may have no
absolutely tangible reason to give for our distaste beyond the
self-evident facts that she paints her face and dyes her hair, dresses
in a very _decollete_ style, and affects a girlish manner that is out of
harmony with her age and condition. But though we cannot formularize
reasons, we have instincts; and sometimes instinct sees more clearly
than reason.

What good in life does this kind of woman do? All her time is taken up,
first, in trying to make herself look twenty or thirty years younger
than she is, and then in trying to make others believe the same; and she
has neither thought nor energy to spare from this, to her, far more
important work than is feeding the hungry or nursing the sick, rescuing
the fallen or soothing the sorrowful. The final cause of her existence
seems to be the impetus she has given to a certain branch of trade
manufacture--unless we add to this, the corruption of society. For whom,
but for her, are the "little secrets" which are continually being
advertised as woman's social salvation--regardless of grammar! The "eaux
noire, brun, et chatain, which dyes the hair any shade in one minute;"
the "kohhl for the eyelids;" the "blanc de perle," and "rou