‘Like the ladies about here? No, I don’t. And that is one reason why I knew you would be awfully dull if you came here. You see, it has suited my tastes not to go much into the society here—in fact, hardly at all; and they have just begun to understand it at last, and to let me alone—give over inviting me, and all that. So you won’t find it very lively. But Magdalen is different. I’ve known her ever since I came here. We were thick at the very first, and have stuck together ever since, because she’s so reasonable and sensible. As for the others’—he spoke with solemnity—‘they are one half sharks and the other half fools. There’s no such thing as meeting a girl, and trying to have a friendship with her, before you go any farther. Your sex, my dear, are incapable of friendship with a man. Either they try to make him in love with them, and make his existence miserable, or they fall in love with him themselves—or think they do; it’s much of a muchness—and if he don’t respond they say he has deceived them, or trifled with them, or something equally absurd. Suppose you see a nice girl, or a girl that you think looks nice. Well, you have a head on your shoulders, and you know she may be a shrew, for all her pleasantness, just as a horse may be a screw, though he looks all right. You think it worth while to try and know her a bit better, before you risk anything. You can’t do it. You may not do it. It is their one object to get you to marry them without giving you any opportunity to know anything about them. You never get to know their real thoughts about any one thing on earth. You must run the gauntlet of their mothers and sisters to get even a word with them. It isn’t fair; it’s deuced hard. Why are you to show up everything, and be slanged if you don’t do it all on the square, while they are not to have any questions asked at all? The sisters are bad enough, especially if you are sweet on a younger one, but the mothers—oh, Lord! Those mothers! If you do but look at one of their precious girls, they are down upon you to know your “intentions.” I say, a man has a right to ask questions in his turn—if their tempers are all right, if they’re sound in wind and limb, and so on. I bolt if I see one of those mothers within——’ He was interrupted by a peal of laughter. Eleanor had contained herself as long as she could, but at each higher flight of Otho’s sombre eloquence it had been more and more difficult to keep her gravity. Now it was impossible. She gave free vent to her mirth, and bent to her saddle-bow in her merriment.