_Miss Garnett_: "No. I meant that if he has been coming here so much, you want to prevent his trifling with others." _Miss Ramsey_: "Something like that. But it ought to be more definite. He ought to realize that if another girl cared for him, it would be cruel to her, paying her attentions, when he was engaged to some one else." _Miss Garnett_: "And cruel to the girl he is engaged to." _Miss Ramsey_: "Yes." She speaks coldly, vaguely. "But that is the personal ground, and I wish to avoid that. I wish to deal with him purely in the abstract." _Miss Garnett_: "Yes, I understand that. And at the same time you wish to punish him. He ought to be made to feel it all the more because he is so severe himself." _Miss Ramsey_: "Severe?" _Miss Garnett_: "Not tolerating anything that's the least out of the way in other people. Taking you up about your ideas and showing where you're wrong, or even silly. Spiritually snubbing, Conny calls it." _Miss Ramsey_: "Oh, I like that in him. It's so invigorating. It braces up all your good resolutions. It makes you ashamed; and shame is sanative." _Miss Garnett_: "That's just what I told Conny, or the same thing. Do you think another one would hurt me? I will risk it, anyway." She takes another chocolate from the box. "Go on." _Miss Ramsey_: "Oh, I was just wishing that I had been out longer, and had a little more experience of men. Then I should know how to act. How do you suppose people do, generally?" _Miss Garnett_: "Why, you know, if they find a man in love with them, after he's engaged to another girl, they make him go back to her, it doesn't matter whether they're in love with him themselves or not." _Miss Ramsey_: "I'm _not_ in love with Mr. Ashley, please." _Miss Garnett_: "No; I'm supposing an extreme case." _Miss Ramsey_, after a moment of silent thought: "Did you ever hear of anybody doing it?" _Miss Garnett_: "Not just in our set. But I know it's done continually." _Miss Ramsey_: "It seems to me as if I had read something of the kind." _Miss Garnett_: "Oh yes, the books are full of it. Are those mallows? They might carry off the effects of the chocolates." Miss Ramsey passes her the box of marshmallows which she has bent over the table to look at. _Miss Ramsey_: "And of course they couldn't get into the books if they hadn't really happened. I wish I could think of a case in point." _Miss Garnett_: "Why, there was Peg Woffington--" _Miss Ramsey_, with displeasure: "She was an actress of some sort, wasn't she?" _Miss Garnett_, with meritorious candor: "Yes, she was. But she was a very _good_ actress." _Miss Ramsey_: "What did _she_ do?"