‘Why, nobody vithit-th them but the Bartonth,’ continued Mr. Farquhar, ‘and why should thuch people come here, unleth they had particular reathonth for preferring a neighbourhood where they are not known? Pooh! it lookth bad on the very fathe of it. _You_ called on them, now; how did you find them?’ ‘O!--Mr. Bridmain strikes me as a common sort of man, who is making an effort to seem wise and well-bred. He comes down on one tremendously with political information, and seems knowing about the king of the French. The Countess is certainly a handsome woman, but she puts on the grand air a little too powerfully. Woodcock was immensely taken with her, and insisted on his wife’s calling on her and asking her to dinner; but I think Mrs. Woodcock turned restive after the first visit, and wouldn’t invite her again.’ ‘Ha, ha! Woodcock hath alwayth a thoft place in hith heart for a pretty fathe. It’th odd how he came to marry that plain woman, and no fortune either.’ ‘Mysteries of the tender passion,’ said Mr. Ely. ‘I am not initiated yet, you know.’ Here Mr. Farquhar’s carriage was announced, and as we have not found his conversation particularly brilliant under the stimulus of Mr. Ely’s exceptional presence, we will not accompany him home to the less exciting atmosphere of domestic life. Mr. Ely threw himself with a sense of relief into his easiest chair, set his feet on the hobs, and in this attitude of bachelor enjoyment began to read Bishop Jebb’s Memoirs. Chapter 4 I am by no means sure that if the good people of Milby had known the truth about the Countess Czerlaski, they would not have been considerably disappointed to find that it was very far from being as bad as they imagined. Nice distinctions are troublesome. It is so much easier to say that a thing is black, than to discriminate the particular shade of brown, blue, or green, to which it really belongs. It is so much easier to make up your mind that your neighbour is good for nothing, than to enter into all the circumstances that would oblige you to modify that opinion.