ng a corridor with Samuel Rogers
when she saw the Regent coming towards them. As he approached he drew
himself to his full height, and passed with an insolent and disdainful
stare, which Lady Jersey returned with a look even more cold and
contemptuous. Then, with a toss of her proud head, she turned to Rogers
and laughingly said, "I did that well, didn't I?"

It was, perhaps, as Queen and Autocrat of "Almack's" that Lady Jersey
won her chief fame--Almack's, that most exclusive and aristocratic club
in Berkeley Street, Piccadilly, the membership of which was the supreme
hall-mark of the world of fashion. No rank, however exalted, no riches,
however great, were a passport to this innermost social circle, over
which Lady Jersey reigned like a beautiful despot.

Scores of the smartest officers of the Guards, men of rank and fashion,
and pets of West End drawing-rooms, clamoured or cajoled for admission
to this jealously-guarded temple, but its doors only opened to receive,
at the most, half a dozen of them. Even such social autocrats as Her
Grace of Bedford and Lady Harrington were coldly turned away from the
doors by the male members of the club; while the ladies shut them in the
face of Lord March and Brook Boothby, to the amazed disgust of these men
of fashion and conquest--for, by the rules of the club, male members
were selected by the ladies, and _vice versa_. But beyond all doubt the
destinies of candidates were in the hands of the half dozen Lady
Patronesses who formed the Committee of the club--Princess Esterhazy,
Princess von Lieven, Ladies Jersey, Sefton and Cowper, and Mrs Drummond
Burrell; and of these my Lady Jersey was the only one who really
counted.

"Three-fourths even of the nobility," says a writer in
the _New Monthly Magazine_, "knock in vain for admission.
Into this _sanctum sanctorum_, of course, the sons of
commerce never think of intruding; and yet into the very
'blue chamber,' in the absence of the six necromancers,
have the votaries of trade contrived to intrude
themselves."

"Many diplomatic arts," writes Captain Gronow, "much
_finesse_, and a host of intrigues were set in motion to
get an invitation to Almack's. Very often persons whose
rank and fortunes entitled them to the _entree_ anywhere,
were excluded by the cliqueism of the Lady patronesses;
for the female government of Almack's was a despotism,
and subject to all