There is sometimes wisdom in listening to a fool’s reasons; for ten to one that the reasons will prove the contrary to what they are brought to support, or will at least bring out some fact, the distant bearing of which on the point of question the fool does not perceive. But when two fools pour out their reasons at once, it is difficult to profit even by their folly. The mother’s authority at last obtaining precedency, I heard Lady de Brantefield’s cause of belief, first: her ladyship declared that she never wore Sir Josseline’s ring without putting on after it a _guard ring_, a ring which, being tighter than Sir Josseline’s, kept it safe on her finger. She remembered drawing off the guard ring when she took off Sir Josseline’s, and put that into Jacob’s hands; her ladyship said it was clear to her mind that she could not have put on Sir Josseline’s again, because here was the guard ring on her _wrong_ finger--a finger on which she never in her life wore it when she wore Sir Josseline’s, for Sir Josseline’s was so loose, it would drop off, unless she had the guard on. “But was not it possible,” I asked, “that your ladyship might this once have put on Sir Josseline’s ring without recollecting the guard?” No, absolutely impossible: if Jacob and all the Jews upon earth swore it (who, by-the-bye, would swear any thing), she could not be convinced against her reason--she knew her own habits--her private reasons to her were unanswerable. Lady Anne’s private reasons to her were equally unanswerable; but they were so confused, and delivered with so much volubility, as to be absolutely unintelligible. All I could gather was, that Fowler and her daughter Nancy were in the room when Lady Anne and her mother first missed the ring--that when her mother drew off her glove, and exclaimed, “Bless me, Sir Josseline’s not here!” Lady Anne ran up to the dressing-table, at which her mother was standing, to try to find the ring, thinking that her mother might have dropped it in drawing off her glove; “but it certainly was not drawn off with the glove.” “But might not it be left in the glove?” I asked. “Oh! dear, no: I shook the glove myself, and Fowler turned every finger inside out, and Nancy moved every individual box upon the dressing-table. We were all in such a fuss, because you know mamma’s so particular about Sir Josseline; and to tell you the truth, I was uncommonly anxious, because I knew if mamma was vexed and lost the ring, she would not give me a certain diamond cross, that makes me so particularly remember every circumstance--and I was in such a flurry, that I know I threw down a bottle of aether that was on mamma’s toilette, on her muff--and it had such a horrid smell!” The muff! I asked if the muff, as well as the glove, had been searched carefully.