"He began to talk about you, mother. Spoke of your good manners. I ought to have knocked him down for his impudence." "Did he reveal his secret?" "No. He gave me a warning--as I told you--and he went away." Lady Woodroffe looked up, with a perfectly calm face. "I believe I could tell you something about his secret." Truth was stamped plainly on that marble brow, with all the other virtues which belong to the _grande dame de par le monde_. "The woman Haveril is, I believe, crazed. The man is a fool, except in making money, where he is, I dare say, a knave. They are aided and abetted by a man of your name, a Richard Woodroffe, who is clearly making money by the conspiracy--and a girl they call Molly Something." "What? Is Molly in it?" "Pray, are you concerned with that person as well as----?" "She is a _protégée_ of Hilarie. It was there I met her. As for the fellow, Richard Woodroffe, he is just a horrid little cad." "Well. That will do. You need not worry yourself about it, Humphrey. I am busy now." She turned to her work, having been interrupted in an essay on the treatment of hardened sinners, considered in connection, I believe, with the case of Jane Cakebread. CHAPTER XXI. "TO BE OFF WITH THE OLD LOVE." Once more, guest night at the college. A good many guest nights had passed since the first. The thoughtful and the curious no longer came; they were not missed by Hilarie and her friends at the place about which there had been at first so much discussion and derision. A college which taught nothing, and was only a place of culture, and consolation, and rest, and good breeding--a mere establishment for reminding women perpetually of their very highest functions and duties--was sure to excite derision. Meanwhile, it went on doing its own work, and nobody derided any longer. This is the way of the world, and it is like one of the three--nay, four, things which the Proverbial philosopher found too wonderful for him--things which he knew not. A man proposes to found, or establish, or create, something new--something which will, perhaps, cause changes small or great in the current order and the current talk. It is immediately fastened upon and he is held up to derision. Nothing is so truly ridiculous as a thing which is new; besides, it makes admirable "copy." If the man kicks out in return, he is jumped upon again. The world is then called upon to observe how completely the creature is squelched, how he lies flat and lifeless on the arid sand. Presently the world observes that the man, so far from being flat and lifeless, is going on just as if there had been no jumping at all; he bears no apparent mark of bruises, no bones are broken, there are no patches of diachylum on his head; he just proceeds quietly with his plan. Then comes another but a fainter sound of derision, because, when people do get hold of a good thing to worry, they like to keep at it. But the dead man, twice killed, goes on, without paying any attention.