wever, at a very early hour.
About four the day of the ladies began. Sometimes, indeed, before that
hour two favoured persons, not always the same, who had accompanied
them home from the Park, would be admitted to share a dainty little
luncheon. Bice now rode at the hour when everybody rides, with the
Contessa, who was a graceful horsewoman, and never looked to greater
advantage than in the saddle. The two beautiful Italians, as they were
called, had in this way, within a week of their arrival, caused a
sensation in the Row, and already their days overflowed with amusement
and society. Few ladies visited the little house in Mayfair, but then
they were not much wanted there. The Contessa was not one of those
vulgar practitioners who profess in words their preference for men's
society. But she said, so sweetly that it was barbarous to laugh (though
many of her friends did so), that, having one close companion of her own
sex, her dearest Bice, who was everything to her, she was independent of
the feminine element. "And then they are so busy, these ladies of
fashion; they have no leisure; they have so many things to do. It is a
thraldom, a heavy thraldom, though the chains are gilded." "Shall we see
you at Lady Blank Blank's to-night? You must be going to the Duchess's?
Of course we shall meet at the Highton Grandmodes!" "Ah!" cried the
Contessa, spreading out her white hands, "it is fatiguing even only to
hear of it. We love our ease, Bice and I; we go nowhere where we are
expected to go."

The gentlemen to whom this speech was made laughed "consumedly." They
even made little signs to each other behind back, and exploded again.
When she looked round at them they said the Contessa was a perfect
mimic, better than anything on the stage, and that she had perfectly
caught the tone of that old Lady Barbe Montfichet, who went everywhere
(whom, indeed, the Contessa did not know), and laughed again. But it was
not at the Contessa's power of mimicry that they laughed. It was at the
delicious falsehood of her pretensions, and the thought that if she
pleased she might appear at the Highton Grandmodes, or meet the best
society at Lady Blank Blank's. These gentlemen knew better; and it was a
joke of which they never tired. They were not, perhaps, the most
desirable class of people in society who had the _entree_ in the
Contessa's little house; they were old acquaintances who had known her
in her progress through the world, mingled with