“No, Mary; that’s just what I don’t know. I don’t know whether I like it or not. Sometimes, when the spirit of that dearest of all women, Mrs. Harold Smith, is upon me, I think that I do like it; but then again, when other spirits are on me, I think that I don’t.” “And who are the owners of the other spirits?” “Oh! you are one, of course. But you are a weak little thing, by no means able to contend with such a Samson as Mrs. Harold. And then you are a little given to wickedness yourself, you know. You’ve learned to like London well enough since you sat down to the table of Dives. Your uncle,—he’s the real impracticable, unapproachable Lazarus who declares that he can’t come down because of the big gulf. I wonder how he’d behave, if somebody left him ten thousand a year?” “Uncommonly well, I am sure.” “Oh, yes; he is a Lazarus now, so of course we are bound to speak well of him; but I should like to see him tried. I don’t doubt but what he’d have a house in Belgrave Square, and become noted for his little dinners before the first year of his trial was over.” “Well, and why not? You would not wish him to be an anchorite?” “I am told that he is going to try his luck,—not with ten thousand a year, but with one or two.” “What do you mean?” “Jane tells me that they all say at Greshamsbury that he is going to marry Lady Scatcherd.” Now Lady Scatcherd was a widow living in those parts; an excellent woman, but one not formed by nature to grace society of the highest order. “What!” exclaimed Mrs. Gresham, rising up from her chair while her eyes flashed with anger at such a rumour. “Well, my dear, don’t eat me. I don’t say it is so; I only say that Jane said so.” “Then you ought to send Jane out of the house.” “You may be sure of this, my dear: Jane would not have told me if somebody had not told her.” “And you believed it?” “I have said nothing about that.” “But you look as if you had believed it.” “Do I? Let us see what sort of a look it is, this look of faith.” And Miss Dunstable got up and went to the glass over the fire-place. “But, Mary, my dear, ain’t you old enough to know that you should not credit people’s looks? You should believe nothing now-a-days; and I did not believe the story about poor Lady Scatcherd. I know the doctor well enough to be sure that he is not a marrying man.” “What a nasty, hackneyed, false phrase that is—that of a marrying man! It sounds as though some men were in the habit of getting married three or four times a month.” “It means a great deal all the same. One can tell very soon whether a man is likely to marry or no.” “And can one tell the same of a woman?”