‘Lords and ladies, my dear. Why, they’re most all lords and ladies this time, asked on purpose to meet a royal prince, who has condescended to stay for a week with Sir Archibald. Lor’! what a fuss my lady will make over him, to be sure. I expect she’s half wild with joy that he is coming. And there’ll be more cards and high play than ever, I suppose, and turning night into day, as I’ve just been telling your good mother. No one in bed till two or three in the morning, and candles left guttering all over the tablecloths, and wine spilt over the carpets, and there--it makes me sick to talk of it. I do declare if the play goes on this time as it did last year, I shall give Sir Archibald warning. It’s scandalous! I did hear as one poor man--Captain Trelany was his name--was quite ruined by it, and has been obliged to sell out of his regiment in consequence and go abroad. Such a wicked thing for a man of Sir Archibald’s age to encourage in his house, but there! it’s all _her_ fault. She don’t go on a bit like a married lady, and I don’t care who hears me say so. A running after gents as she does, screaming and laughing like a schoolgirl, and driving over the place like a mad woman. I’m sure I wish sometimes I’d never set eyes on her face.’ ‘Ah, I’m glad our Nell has nothing to do with such,’ said Mrs Llewellyn, ‘for it must be a bad example for a young girl. My daughters have been brought up steady and respectable, and if I thought they would ever take to such ways, it would break my heart.’ ‘What gentlemen are you going to send to mother, Mrs Hody?’ said Nell to turn the conversation. ‘I don’t know yet, my dear, but they are sure to be bachelors, so don’t you listen to any nonsense they may say to you. Young gentlemen are not half particular enough in these days. They talk a lot of rubbish to a pretty girl and mean nothing by it, whilst she maybe takes it all for gospel truth, and cries her eyes out when she finds it was only their fun. Men always have been took, and always will be took by a pretty face to the end of time, and think it’s an honour for any poor girl to receive notice from them; but don’t you believe nothing they may say to you, Nell, for gentlemen marry for money now-a-days and nothing else it strikes me.’ But at this adjuration Mrs Llewellyn ruffled up her feathers like an old hen when her chickens are attacked.