‘Not older people, like you and me,’ said Mrs. Carolus, as she cast herself jauntily on the sward beside me. ‘Ah! that’s just what I told Sophy Markham the other day. She will pretend to be so _very_ young, you know—ridiculous it is in a woman of her age—and came skipping down the stairs two or three at a time, and the consequence was she sprained her ankle. I said it served her right, and she was angry with me, of course; but I am used to that. Mr. Lovett has gone to Rille to-day, I find.’ ‘He has—but how did you hear it?’ ‘By a very natural means, my dear or perhaps you will say, an unnatural one. Sophia Markham has gone with him.’ ‘_With him!_ In the same diligence, you mean.’ ‘Well, she could hardly do other than that, considering there is but one. No, I do not mean in the same diligence, only: I mean what I said, she has gone with Mr. Lovett. She had no intention of it till she saw him on the steps of the hotel, and then she suddenly discovered she had something to do in Rille that could not possibly be delayed. Dear, dear! I am quite sick and tired of her devices.’ ‘She wanted to get out of St. Pucelle on “pig-killing day,” I suppose, Mrs. Carolus. Tessie tells me all decent people leave the town to-day if they can. Do you not hear the far-off squeaks of the poor porkers as we sit here? It must be horrible to be in the midst of them.’ Mrs. Carolus grew quite testy over my frivolity. ‘Nonsense, Miss Marsh! You must be trying to take advantage of my credulity. But if you think it delicate or proper that an unmarried lady should ask for, and accept, the chaperonage of one gentleman in order to run off and see another, I cannot view it in the same light.’ ‘Oh, there is another gentleman in the wind, is there! That is lucky for Miss Markham, for I really do not think it is of any use trying her chances with Mr. Lovett.’ ‘Of course there is another! That is the indelicate part of it. The young man I once mentioned to you, Miss Marsh, as having been rather taken with the pretty Miss Lovett, is staying in Rille just now, and the way in which that woman goes on with him is disgusting—positively disgusting. If you saw them together you’d really say she was ready to jump down his throat. And she is constantly writing to him, too.’ ‘Perhaps there is a mutual understanding between them,’ I suggested. ‘Dear me, no! she goes on in the same way with everybody. I am sure, the scenes that have taken place between her and that young Thrale are a perfect scandal, and enough to ruin the reputation of any house. I have blushed scarlet, and so has my Willie, only to hear the things she says to him.’ ‘She has never struck me as being particularly refined or reticent, either in her manners or conversation.’