Everybody had decided Edgar’s fate for him. Some people said it had been all settled before they came up from the country. And there could not be the least doubt that, if Edgar had let the season pass without saying anything to Gussy, he would have been concluded by everybody to have used her very ill. And a great many speculations passed through Edgar’s mind as he stood there and waited. Sometimes he witnessed such a meeting as ought to have been in store for himself. He saw the youth and maiden meet who were to get to the real climax in their romance by means of the Lowestofts’ ball, and wondered within himself whether the outside world could see the same glow in his eyes which he could see in those of the other lover, or whether the same delightful atmosphere of consciousness enveloped Gussy as that which seemed to enclose the other girl in a rosy cloud. And he saw other pairs meet, not of youths and maidens; he saw gleams of strange fire which did not warm but burn; he saw the vacant looks of the mass, the factitious flutter of delight with which the dull crowd recognised its acquaintances. Lord Newmarch came up to him when he had occupied this perch for some time. “What are you doing here, of all places in the world? Are you going or coming? Oh, I see; you are waiting for the Thornleighs,” he said; “they are generally in good time for a ball----” “I am waiting because it is amusing here,” said Edgar, careful even now that Gussy at least should not be discussed. “Amusing!--the amusement must be in you, so I will stay by you,” said Lord Newmarch; “probably some of it may come my way. What an odd fellow you are, to expect to be amused wherever you go, like a bumpkin at a fair! By the way, that reminds me, Arden, the people have a faculty for being amused which is wonderful; they are ready for it at all times and seasons, you know, not like us. It is a faculty which ought to be made use of for their improvement. I don’t see why they shouldn’t be educated in spite of themselves. The drama, for instance; now the drama has lost its hold on _us_--to us the play is a bore. We go to the opera to see each other, not to hear anything. But the people are all agog for anything in the shape of a play. What do you think? If the stage has any vigour left in it, instead of getting up sensation dramas for cads and shopkeepers----” “But cads and shopkeepers are part of the people,” said Edgar. “No; that is not what I mean; I mean the real lower classes--the working men--our masters that are to be. How could they learn patriotism, not to say good sense, better than by means of Shakespeare? Poetry of the highest class is adapted to every capacity. What is secondary may have to be explained and broken down, but the highest----”