It is just here where a girl of this kind is so uncanny.  Of course, for those of us who wish to take a lofty view of love and lovers, who wish to think each woman sought out by a man for her beauty and virtues and married for love, it is very repugnant to have to face the fact that there are hundreds of sweet, nice girls, of good family and good training, who regard the securing for themselves of another girl’s lover a perfectly legitimate operation.

Not infrequently one hears it said that So-and-So is one of the most attractive girls in town, because she can cut any girl out that she tries to.  You may say that a man so easily won is no great loss, or that such things may occur in other circles of society but not in yours.  Possibly they do not.  One does not deny the honor of honorable men and women in any walk in life.  But in polite society, fashionable society, these things occur.  Oftener in New York than in Boston, and oftener in London and Paris than in New York.  Indeed, we may sneer, as we often do, at the primitive customs of the lowly, and at their absurd phrase of “keeping company.”  It makes a delightful jest.  But beneath it is a greater regard for the rights of a man or woman in love than one is apt to find higher in the social scale.

With them, to select one another “to keep company,” is like an offer of marriage.  To “keep steady company” is the formal announcement of an engagement, which is a potential marriage.  It is the first step towards matrimony, and is almost as sacred and final.

With their more fortunate and envied sisters in the smart set, an engagement is the loosest kind of a bond, and neither man nor woman is safe from the wooing of other men and women until the marriage vows have been pronounced, and, if your society is very fashionable, not even then.

So that this society of which I speak would undeniably be called “good.”

Now, of course, all women desire to be loved.  She is a very queer woman who would deny that proposition if asked by the right person, and I hope he would have sense enough not to believe her if she did.  I do not object to a girl making herself attractive to men in a modest and maidenly way.  On the contrary, I heartily approve of it.  But I would have her select a man who belonged to no other girl, and to know that nothing but misery can result from the taking of a lover away from her friend.

It is the fashion for women to deny that this is done.  I never could see why.  But possibly they deny it because they are afraid, if they discuss it, that people will think some girl has lured a lover or two away from them.

People who have witnessed the outward results of this phenomenon also deny the true cause, on the ground that the robber girl was not clever enough to have done it.  That she simply was more to the man’s taste than the first girl, and so it was all the fault of the man.

Of course, I cannot deny the fickleness of man.  But I do say that the girl hardly lives, no matter how pretty she is, who has not the wit to get another girl’s lover if she wants him.  It makes no difference how young she is, she never makes the mistake of disparaging the first girl.  No woman of the world is less liable to such an error than a girl who deliberately intends to get another girl’s lover.