see a great actor he invited your hostess and you, and he never went to any place with you alone. There were only a few stolen moments when you could say to him just what you wished, but he was acting as society in the city demanded, and showing by his formal behavior his respect for you. When he sent you a bunch of flowers there was one for your cousin, and you were a bit foolish not to value yours as much as you would if he had not sent another. What he did was right, and he would have been counted singularly gauche and awkward if he had done as you wished, and so called forth criticisms in which the words "bad-mannered" would have been most conspicuous.
Do not make the very great mistake of counting elderly women as of no use socially. Of course, you are respectful to them, but you have thought that at social functions they were out of place. My dear girl, the matron is the power behind the throne. She decides whether you are desirable, whether you shall receive an invitation to the most exclusive affair and whether her daughter shall count you among her intimates. It is she to whom the young men go for introductions, and your doom is sealed if she says: "I don't think you would care for Miss Pegram, she is not a girl of good manners." With the passing of youth power comes as a recompense.
