her of all responsibility, if not of all anxiety.

It is naturally during the London Season that the life of the
Hurlingham Girl is at its fullest and best. On week-day mornings she
is a frequent attendant in the Row, the means of her father being
apparently sufficient to provide her with a sleek and showy Park
hack and an irreproachable groom. Thence she hastens home to rest
and dawdle until the hour arrives for luncheon, to which meal she has
invited the youth who happens to be temporarily dancing attendance
upon her, for it is understood in many houses that luncheon is an open
meal for which no formal invitation from a parent is necessary. In the
afternoon there is always a bazaar, an amateur concert, an exhibition,
a fashionable _matinée_ or a Society tea-party to be visited. For the
evening there are dinners, and theatres, and an endless succession of
dances, at which the flowers, the suppers, and the general decorations
possess as much or as little variety as the conversation of those who
overcrowd the rooms to an accompaniment of dance-music that may once
have been new.

[Illustration]

But of course there are distractions. Now and again Society seeks
relief from its load of care by emigrating _en masse_ for the day to
a race-meeting at Sandown or Kempton. There the Hurlingham Girl is
as much at home as though she were native to the spot, sprung, as it
were, from the very turf itself. The interest she takes or pretends to
take in racing is something astounding. For in truth she knows nothing
about horses, their points, their pedigrees, or their performances.
Yet she chatters about them and their races, their jockeys, their
owners, the weight they carry, their tempers, and the state of the