by Aphrodite's favourites) will be withdrawn from their great aims, and
transformed into happy crust-munching devotees--in other words, fast
friends. Lady Duff Gordon had many, and the truest, and of all lands.
She had, on the other hand, her number of detractors, whom she excused.
What woman is without them, if she offends the conventions, is a step in
advance of her day, and, in this instance, never hesitates upon the
needed occasion to dub things with their right names? She could
appreciate their disapproval of her in giving herself the airs of a man,
pronouncing verdicts on affairs in the style of a man, preferring
association with men. So it was; and, besides, she smoked. Her
physician had hinted at the soothing for an irritated throat that might
come of some whiffs of tobacco. She tried a cigar, and liked it, and
smoked from that day, in her library chair and on horseback. Where she
saw no harm in an act, opinion had no greater effect on her than summer
flies to one with a fan. The country people, sorely tried by the
spectacle at first, remembered the gentle deeds and homely chat of an
eccentric lady, and pardoned her, who was often to be seen discoursing
familiarly with the tramp on the road, incapable of denying her house-
door to the lost dog attached by some instinct to her heels. In the
circles named 'upper' there was mention of women unsexing themselves. She
preferred the society of men, on the plain ground that they discuss
matters of weight, and are--the pick of them--of open speech, more
liberal, more genial, better comrades. Was it wonderful to hear them,
knowing her as they did, unite in calling her _coeur d'or_? And women
could say it of her, for the reasons known to women. Her intimate
friendships were with women as with men. The closest friend of this most
manfully-minded of women was one of her sex, little resembling her,
except in downright truthfulness, lovingness, and heroic fortitude.

The hospitable house at Esher gave its welcome not merely to men and