“Oh, I know,” said Gussy, clapping her hands, and forgetting all about her soup. “I wish I could have seen Clare’s face. But it is not at all a bad house to dine at, and I advise you to go. He is a cotton-merchant or something; but, you know, though it is all very well for Clare, who is an only daughter and an heiress, we can’t afford to stand on our dignity. All the men say it is a very nice house.” “Then I have not behaved so very badly after all?” said Edgar. “You can’t think what a comfort that is to me. I rather thought I deserved to be sent to the Tower.” “I should not think it was bad at all,” said Gussy. “I should like it of all things; but then I am not Clare. They have everything, you know, that can be got with money. And such wine, the men say; though I don’t understand that either. And there are some lovely pictures, and a nice daughter. I know she is pretty, for I have seen her, and they say she will have oceans of money. Money must be very nice when there are heaps of it,” Gussy added softly, with a little sigh. Edgar paused for a moment, taken aback. He had not yet met his ideal woman; but it seemed to him that when he did meet her, she would care nothing for money, and would shrink from any contact with the world. A woman was to him a soft, still-shadowy ideal, surrounded by an atmosphere of the tenderest poetry, and celestial detachment from earth and its necessities. It gave him a gentle shock to be brought thus face to face with so many active, real human creatures, full of personal wants and wishes, and to identify them as the maiden-queens of imagination. Clare had not helped him to any such realisation of the abstract woman. There was no sort of struggle in her being, no aspiration after anything external to her. It was impossible to think of her as capable of advancement or promotion. Edgar himself was by no means destitute of ambition. He had already felt that to settle himself down with all his energies and powers into the calm routine of a country gentleman’s life would be impossible. He wanted more to do, something to aim at, the prospect of an expanding existence. But Clare was different. She was in harmony with all her surroundings, wanted nothing, was adapted to every necessity of her position--a being totally different from any man. It seemed to Edgar that so all women should be--passive, receiving with a tender grace, which made their acceptance a favour and honour, but never acquiring, never struggling; regarding, indeed, with horror, any possibility of being obliged to struggle and acquire. Gussy, though she charmed him, gave him at the same time a gentle shock. That it should be hard for Helena not to be able to go into Parliament, and that this fair creature should sigh at the thought of heaps of money, sounded like sacrilege to him. He came to a confused pause, wondering at her. Gussy was as keen as a needle notwithstanding her chattering, and she found him out.