She did not cry. She did not make any lamentation; but she sat with her head drooped, thinking out her trouble, vaguely wondering through it all, whether—when Mrs. Ormson said, as she was often kind enough to do, “Arthur ought to have married a rich wife,” and when Miss Hope, kneeling on the ground, murmured “You are too good for Arthur; he ought to have married a virago,”—they had mutually in their minds’ eyes Mrs. Aymescourt, _née_ Laxton. CHAPTER IX. A LITTLE BIOGRAPHY. It is a curious question to consider how very frequently the same matter is being discussed at the same time by different people; to notice how a similar idea is germinated in utterly dissimilar minds, and becomes for a period the subject of animated discussion between various pairs and groups of people. There is no reason, so far as we can tell, why two men should talk on any given topic at any given time; but, supposing that two men do so converse, we may be morally certain that two other people, and many other twos besides, either have got, or immediately will get, hold of the theme also, and commence tearing it to rags straight away. Various questions go the round of families, little communities, large masses, the bulk of the population, the inhabitants of countries, all about the same time. Different subjects seem to come in the air like influenza, cholera, the cattle plague, without rhyme or reason; they affect the whole of society to a greater or less extent; and when they are exhausted, another idea, like another epidemic, takes the place of its predecessor. There is no accounting for these things, no accounting for the fact that often, when you are thinking or talking of a friend long absent, he walks into your chambers, or stops you in the street; no accounting for the very disagreeable fact, that if you find a creditor straying into your mind, if you begin wondering why he has given you peace for so long, the next post is almost certain to bring a little reminder from him; no accounting for the ill-fortune which if, Jones, shall we say, take to writing a memoir of Fair Rosamond, sets all the Browns, Smiths, and Robinsons writing books about that frail beauty also. Once upon a time, two people, unknown to each other, resident as far apart as Northumberland and Cornwall, shall we say, composed two melodies, and, behold, when a common friend heard the twain, they were identical. It is the same with works of imagination: a dozen people, writing novels in one year, are almost certain to handle identical subjects with a difference.