Lady Lamerton had likened her to American barbed wire, and those who have dealings with Mrs. Cribbage touch her as I have seen porters handle a roll of spiked wire deposited on the railway platform, with caution, and impatience to consign it to its proper destination. And yet, though every one dreads, and some positively loathe Mrs. Cribbage, yet all agree that it would not be possible to live without her. She keeps society together as a paperweight compacts all kinds of scraps of correspondence, and bills and notices. As long as young girls are in the nursery, and subject to governesses, they look forward to their coming out as to a time of emancipation. They have not reckoned on Mrs. Cribbage, who, as with a whoop they burst out of the school-room, confronts them and blocks their road. Arminell had done with her schooling, and properly ought to have come out that year, but the event had been postponed, as Lord Lamerton did not wish to go to town that year. She was free from governesses, and by no means inclined to lay her neck under the wheels of Mrs. Cribbage’s car. When my lord and my lady had gone to town during the season, Arminell and Giles had not attended them. Giles was better in health in the country, with his pony, and his cricket, that is, with the tutor bowling to him, and the coachman’s son acting as long-stop; accordingly, he was left at Orleigh to his great delight, and Arminell was left as well, with the governess, to continue her lessons, till she put off governesses and other childish things. Arminell had not therefore been brought much in contact with the world, and did not know the force of public opinion, she no more considered it than she considered the pressure of the atmosphere. According to our best authorities, we are subjected to the weight of fifteen pounds to each square-inch of surface, and a man of ordinary size sustains a pressure on him of some thirty-thousand pounds of air. I am a man of ordinary size, but I no more knew that I laboured under the burden of thirty-thousand pounds than I did that I was subjected to the pressure of about the same burden of Mrs. Cribbage who sits on my shoulders all day and squats on my chest all night, till I turned up the matter in an encyclopædia. We no more think about the pressure of public opinion, I say, than we do about the pressure of the atmosphere. We make allowance for it, in all we undertake. If we ascend great heights we suffer because we are no longer subjected to the pressure; our noses bleed, our breath comes short; and if, by any chance, we get out of the region where public opinion weighs, we become alarmed, uneasy, gasp, and cry out to be brought back under its incubus once more. When Arminell had left the room, and closed the door behind her, she stood for a minute, resting the fingers of her left hand on the lock.