It was perhaps too elderly and too serious. Well conducted married people are dull in society. They are not sufficiently interested in each other to exert themselves for each other’s amusement, and there can be little doubt that as a source of diversion and interest to their fellow creatures, a couple of naughty persons bent on flirtation and ill-behaviour make a better recompense to their entertainers. This element was sadly wanting at Oakley; there was no little drama to watch, legitimate genteel comedy ripening towards marriage and all the domestic joys, or more reprehensible episode tending the other way, such as often proves more exciting still to the jaded appetite of society. And it can scarcely be wondered at, if in the absence of other fun this respectable assembly threw itself on the affairs of the family. There was a great deal of conversation in corners about Arthur’s marriage. The Bates family were too low down in the world to have even reached the level of gossip, and except that he had made a very foolish marriage, a _mésalliance_ in every sense of the word, no one knew anything further, except one lady was acquainted with Mrs. Anthony Curtis, and had received from her a vague account of her meeting with Nancy. This lady had formed an idea, quite erroneous as it happened, yet an idea, of Arthur’s wife, which was a point not attained to by anybody else in the house. She thought (as seemed so natural) that Nancy must have been an actress in a minor theatre, a nameless _figurante_, one of the class who are supposed to enthral well-born young men, and who, wonder of wonders, do so, to the everlasting astonishment of the world, notwithstanding all its theories on the subject. But it did not enter into anybody’s mind to suppose that the girl whom Arthur had married had not the advantage of being wicked and shameless. The lady who knew the story whispered it to others when none of the family were present. “Turned her out of her rooms, I assure you, my dear,” she said; “they were in the best rooms of a most expensive hotel, I need not say. Such people never spare any expense.” “A girl from a theatre!--but what theatre? There are such differences; that means anything, from a lady to a dressing-girl.” “She was not a lady, at least; that is the only one thing that is certain. She was a--” Here the teller of the tale stopped abruptly, adding in a louder tone, “I know only one lady on the stage, but she is enough to justify any amount of raving. Mrs. Kenworthy--don’t you know--you must have seen her.” It need not be added that it was one of Lady Curtis’s friends, a middle-aged person who knew everybody, who spoke, and that the sudden break was owing to the entrance of Lucy, who came in unsuspicious, and caught them in the middle of their talk.