"Rosaline and I talk of a little trip abroad together in a month's time." She smiled at him. "Will you forgive me if I take her away for three or four weeks?" "I shall miss you both very much. I wish I could come too, but it's quite impossible." "I think she wants a change." What Mrs. Ladd wished to convey was that the necessary interval might be tiresome to Lady Rosaline, but she did not quite see how to put it delicately. "It's a long drag from Christmas to Easter, isn't it? Have you seen her lately?" "I paid her a late call one day last week--that's all. I'm very busy." "Of course you are--with your practice! Have you met a Sir Axel Thrapston at Rosaline's?" "Axel Thrapston? No, I don't think so. No, I'm sure not." He very seldom met anybody at Lady Rosaline's, as his visits were timed so as to avoid, as far as possible, such a contingency. "Who is he?" "I don't know much about him myself. He comes from Northumberland, I think, and lives there generally. I believe his wife was an old friend of Rosaline's; she died about two years ago. I've met him there twice--a middle-aged man, rather bald, but quite good-looking." "No, I haven't met him, Mrs. Ladd." "He seems just to have made his appearance, but I think he's rather assiduous." She laughed again. "And two years is just about the dangerous time, isn't it?" Thus Mrs. Ladd, hinting to Cyril Maxon, in all friendship, that he was not the only man in the world and had better not forget the fact. Friend as she was, she knew enough of her man to feel a certain pleasure in administering the wholesome warning. It needed more to drive Cyril Maxon from his confident appropriation of Lady Rosaline, but that something more was not long in coming. He, too, met Sir Axel at her flat--once or twice in the hours which he had grown into the habit of considering as reserved for himself; he tried very hard to show neither surprise nor annoyance, but he felt an immediate grievance. Here was he, the busiest of men, painfully contriving a spare hour; was he to spend it in three-cornered trivial talk? Thrapston had all the long idle day to call. Lady Rosaline really might give him a hint! But it appeared not to strike her that she might. And she seemed to like Sir Axel's company--as, indeed, most people would. He was a simple country gentleman, no fool at all at his own business, but without much pretension to intellectual or artistic culture. This, however, he could recognize and respect; he recognized and respected it in Lady Rosaline, was anxious to learn from her, and deferred to her authority. "When people wish to attach, they should always be ignorant. To come with a well-informed mind is to come with an inability of administering to the vanity of others which a sensible person would always wish to avoid." Jane Austen perhaps allows herself a little malice in this remark, but we cannot deny that she speaks with authority on human nature.