“I hear,” said Lady Millicent, who did not feel quite sure that her son was not speaking in the ironical vein to which she had so especial an objection,--“I hear that the Guernseys are going to make themselves more than usually ridiculous this year at Fairleigh. Lady G. intends to do the popular, they say, for a whole fortnight. Open house is to be kept--so intensely absurd! And people of all kinds to be asked! In short, a regular _omnium gatherum_!” “O no, mamma, not quite that,” Rhoda said timidly, but terribly eager withal to do away with an impression which might tend to exclude _her_ from a participation in the gaieties of Fairleigh. “Not quite; and O, mamma,” gathering a kind of desperate courage from the emergency of the case, “you promised that if Lady Guernsey gave a ball this year, I _should_ go to it. I know just how it is; Charlotte Mellon told me all about the arrangements. _All_ kinds of people are to be asked to the archery meeting and the fireworks--all the out-of-doors amusements, that is; but at the ball there will only be the county families, and--” “How delightfully dull and select!” said Horace. “And how highly satisfactory, Rhoda, to think that you will make your _début_ under such very favourable auspices!” “Anything is better than a mixed society,” said Lady Millicent loftily. “In these days one cannot be too careful whom one associates with. I foresee no end of annoyances with the Duberly connections. The women belonging to that class of persons are often positively dreadful. Really Arthur is much worse than thoughtless! Only this afternoon he has been the cause of my being excessively worried and disturbed! Here is a letter which I have just received from Mr. Duberly. I thought it most extraordinary when I saw the post-mark, Bigglesworth, that _I_ should receive a letter from any of the family; but I was still more astonished when I glanced over the contents. _Read_ it! I really couldn’t get through it all, but I saw it was about your brother being so much at Updown Paddocks. _His_ father--fancy the man talking to me about his relations!--considers it very wrong, he writes, and dangerous to be on the turf; and Arthur _must_, he concludes, have to do with race-horses, or he would never be so much with John Beacham at the Paddocks. You had better see your brother about it, Horace, as soon as possible. I really can have nothing to do personally with these people. They are respectable, of course, or your poor father would not have countenanced them; but they are terribly _mezzo cetto_, and when that is the case, anything approaching to familiarity had better be avoided.”