It is a humiliating position for a man to find himself in. It is pleasant (perhaps) to be the object of pursuit, and to feel that mothers and daughters are fluttered by your entrance or exit, or by any silly word it may be your pleasure to address to the young women who are being put up to market. But even to those young women who are put up to market the transaction is scarcely so humbling as it is to the man, who is reckoned among them not as a man at all, but as so much money, so many lands, so many luxuries. Edgar was cast down by this revelation--down to the very depths. What a fool he had been to think they liked _him_. Was he worth liking by anybody? Was he not rather an insignificant, common-place wretch, unworthy the least notice on his own merits? And he did not in the least desire to be noticed for the sake of Arden. It seemed to him the very last depth of contempt. For a few days after this Edgar went about very sadly, abstaining from everybody, and feeling very much like a culprit. He kept away from Lady Augusta’s pleasant house, and that did not make him any the happier; and then it suddenly occurred to him that he might be thought, in the odious jargon of “society,” to be “behaving badly” to Gussy, a thought which stung him so that he seized his hat and rushed out to call, meaning he knew not what--perhaps to ask her piteously if she really wanted Arden, and to offer it to her acceptance. But the room was full of visitors, and Gussy took very little notice of him, and it would be impossible to say how small he felt, how impertinent and presumptuous; but still the thought came back.