“I don’t suppose all girls should follow one rule any more than all boys,” said Edgar, with polite equivocation; and then Gussy returned to her first subject, and gave him sketches of everybody at the table. Mr. Blundell, who was stupid and good, and his wife, who was stupid and not very good; and the Honourable pair, who were close to their young historian--so close, that she had to speak half in whisper, half in metaphor. “They have both been so dreadfully taken in,” Gussy said. “She thought his elder brother was dying; and he thought she was as rich as the Queen of Sheba; whereas she has only got a little money, and poor Newmarch is better again. Hush, I can’t say any more. Yes, he is better; and they say he is going to be married, which would be dreadfully hard upon them. How wicked it is to talk like this!--but then everybody does it. You hear just the same things everywhere till you get to believe them, and are so glad of somebody fresh to tell them to. Oh yes, there is _that man_. If you were to listen to him for an hour, you would think there was not a good man nor a good woman in the world. He tells you how all the marriages are made up, and how she was forced into it, and he was cheated; or how they quarrelled the day before the wedding, and broke it off; or how the husband was trapped and made to marry when he did not want to. Oh, don’t you hate such men? Yet he is very amusing, especially in the country. I don’t remember his name. He is in some office or other--somebody’s secretary; but there are dozens just like him. We are going to town next week, and I shall hate the very sight of such men; but in the country he is well enough. Oh, there is mamma moving; do pick up my glove for me, please.”