“If I must not laugh, pray teach me some more philosophical way of expressing my feelings,” said Edgar, “I fear I should laugh still more if you did me the honour to select me as one of your instructors. A year hence when I have been well trained by Phil, I may have a little more confidence in myself.” “If you mean,” said Lady Mary, somewhat offended, “that instructing others is the best way to confirm your own knowledge, I am sure you are quite right; but if you mean to laugh at my scheme--” “Pray pardon me,” said Edgar, “I can’t help it. The idea of teaching you is too much for my gravity. Tell me who the other learned pundits are from whom Lady Mary Tottenham learns--” “Lady Mary Tottenham would learn from any man who had anything to teach her,” she answered with momentary anger; then added with a short laugh, extorted from her against her will, “Mr. Earnshaw, you are very impertinent and unkind; why should you laugh at one’s endeavour to help one’s fellow-creatures to a little instruction, and one’s self--” “Are you quarrelling?” said Mr. Tottenham, stalking in suddenly, with his glass in his eye. “What is the matter? Earnshaw, I want to interest you in a very pet scheme of mine. When my wife has done with you, let me have a hearing. I want him to drive in with me to Tottenham’s, Mary, and see what is doing there.” “I hope Mr. Earnshaw will be kinder to you than he has been to me,” said Lady Mary; “at me he does nothing but laugh. He despises women, I suppose, like so many other men, and thinks us beneath the range of intellectual beings.” “What a cruel judgment,” said Edgar, “because I am tickled beyond measure at the thought of having anything to teach you, and at the suggestion that you can improve your mind by attending lectures, and are undergoing mental discipline by means of mathematics and history--” “Oh, then it is only that you think me too old,” said Lady Mary, with the not unagreeable amusement of a pretty woman who knows herself to be not old, and to look still younger and fresher than she feels; and they had an amiable laugh over this excellent joke, which entirely restored the friendly relations between them. Mr. Tottenham smiled reflectively with his glass in his eye, not looking into the matter. He was too seriously occupied with his own affairs to enter into any unnecessary merriment. “Come along, Earnshaw,” he said, “I want you to come into Tottenham’s with me, and on the way I will tell you all about my scheme, which my wife takes a great interest in also. You will come to the next evening, Mary? It is always so much more successful when you are there.”