Anne Ambler's Coming-Out Party

Hey, I think this story in my October 1915 Housewife was written about me.

If any one of the guests had been asked if Anne Ambler was one of the house party being entertained by Mrs. Vander, he or she would have answered vaguely but sincerely, "Anne Ambler? Dear me, I don't seem to recall."

Anne was not a social success. She was invited to functions because she "belonged" and there it ended. Even her family, blinded by a natural affection, had never found her exactly exciting. Yet she was not stupid - she had won honors at college. She was not unattractive; indeed, with more animation she would have been unusually pretty. The trouble was that Anne was old and she could not remember being any younger.

There are people who in one way or another miss their first youth and go wistfully through life eyeing the youth of others as if they fancy it might be theirs gone astray. Anne was like that.
...

An unconquerable shyness raised a great wall about her and she failed miserably to make good with the few advances she met, so people gradually left her alone. "They think I am stupid," she would groan resentfully, "yet inside I am just as interesting as they are!"

Anne had decided not to accept the invitation to the house party. She knew that they would dance every evening, and through diffidence, she had never learned. They would pair off and flirt, make love and be made love to, and she would sit and look on because she could not help it, then cry for the same reason. She knew from experience, and she was tired of being mistaken for one of the chaperones.

"Why," Anne asked herself, "if I were intended for an old maid wasn't I given the soul of one? Then I would not wince every time I see two people together who are in love."

In the illustration she appears to be talking to a Cavalier, so it may be a ghost story.

ETA: It's a costume party! The moral of the story is, dress up as a child with a shockingly short skirt, engage in a teensy amount of ageplay, and you will get the hot lawyer.