Page:A hairdresser's experience in high life.djvu/61

Rh do not know how contemptible they make themselves by this servile deference to certain ton women. And these very women do not know how much good they could do, in place of the evil they yearly commit, by paying respectful attention to really clever persons, who are nevertheless weak enough to desire their notice. The unfortunate lady of the fifteen trunks and the hundred and fifty dresses, was unsuccessful with the ton, and so threw herself away upon a fashionable Lothario, whose name has figured with hers in public print since, to the scandal of all the world. He saw her craving for excitement, and won her affections. She went to Europe for her health—which is the fashion now-a-days—where her husband left her in care of a physician. The lover soon followed. A season was passed in Paris, a superb wardrobe got up, and the next summer saw them again at Saratoga, the lady making five toilets a day, as usual, and wearing shoes and gloves very much too small for her hands and feet. Her next winter at the South was a tolerable success, but Saratoga was always a failure with her. Many ladies were as critically situated, however, in love affairs as Mrs. W., but, managing their cards with more shrewdness than she did, they passed the ordeal less harmfully. For instance, there was among the belles of that very season a very young, beautiful and newly-married lady, with an old rich husband. His wealth enabled her to carry on a magnificent career, and she didn't care a fig for the tyrant women of the ton. She had a circle of her own, who hovered about her perfectly indifferent to all others. Her coachman, footman and servants were all in livery. The husband was a merchant,