Lady Katrine went round canvassing. “Blue, green, or white? say blue, _pray_.” But when she came to Helen, she made a full stop, asked no question--preferred no prayer, but after fixing attention by her pause, said, “I need not ask Miss Stanley’s vote or opinion, as I know my cousin’s, and with Miss Stanley it is always ‘I say ditto to Lady Cecilia;’ therefore, to save trouble, I always count two for Cecilia--one for herself and one for her _double_.” “Right, Lady Katrine Hawksby,” cried a voice from afar, which made her start; “you are quite right to consider Helen Stanley as my daughter’s double, for my daughter loves and esteems her as her second self--her better self. In this sense Helen is Lady Cecilia’s double, but if you mean----” “Bless me! I don’t know what I meant, I declare. I could not have conceived that Lady Davenant----Miss Stanley, I beg a thousand million of pardons.” Helen, with anxious good-nature, pardoned before she was asked, and hastened to pass on to the business of the day, but Lady Davenant would not so let it pass; her eye still fixed she pursued the quailing enemy--“One word more. In justice to my daughter, I must say her love has not been won by flattery, as none knows better than the Lady Katrine Hawksby.” The unkindest cut of all, and on the tenderest part. Lady Katrine could not stand it. Conscious and trembling, she broke through the circle, fled into the conservatory, and, closing the doors behind her, would not be followed by Helen, Cecilia, or any body. Lady Castlefort sighed, and first breaking the silence that ensued, said, “‘Tis such a pity that Katrine will always so let her wit run away with her--it brings her so continually into----for my part, in all humility I must confess, I can’t help thinking that, what with its being unfeminine and altogether so incompatible with what in general is thought amiable--I cannot but consider wit in a woman as a real misfortune. What say the gentlemen? they must decide, gentlemen being always the best judges.” With an appealing tone of interrogation she gracefully looked up to the gentlemen; and after a glance towards Granville Beauclerc, unluckily unnoticed or unanswered, her eyes expected reply from Horace Churchill. He, well feeling the predicament in which he stood, between a fool and a _femme d’esprit_, answered, with his ambiguous smile, “that no doubt it was a great misfortune to have ‘_plus d’esprit qu’on ne sait mêner_.’” “This is a misfortune,” said Lady Davenant, “that may be deplored for a great genius once in an age, but is really rather of uncommon occurrence. People complain of wit where, nine times in ten, poor wit is quite innocent; but such is the consequence of having kept bad company. Wit and ill-nature having been too often found together, when we see one we expect the other; and such an inseparable false association has been formed, that half the world take it for granted that there is wit if they do but see ill-nature.”