Read "Rose, Blanche, and Violet, Volume III" by George Henry Lewes online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
The soirée at Hester Mason's, to which they went that evening, was very much the same as the one formerly described; there were fewer guests, and among them more women: a sure sign that she was getting on in the world, and that the reputation of her parties was beginning to cover any suspicious circumstances in her own position.
But the women were still of a questionable class: questionable, I mean, not as regards propriety, but _ton_. There were no ladies who gave parties, who were recognised as belonging to "society; " and, above all, there were no girls there: the virgins were old, ugly, or wise.