_Miss Garnett_: "Well, it's a long time since I read it; and it's rather old-fashioned now. But there was a countryman of some sort, I remember, who came away from his wife, and fell in love with Peg Woffington, and then the wife follows him up to London, and begs her to give him back to her, and she does it. There's something about a portrait of Peg--I don't remember exactly; she puts her face through and cries when the wife talks to the picture. The wife thinks it is a real picture, and she is kind of soliloquizing, and asking Peg to give her husband back to her; and Peg does, in the end. That part is beautiful. They become the greatest friends." _Miss Ramsey_: "Rather silly, I should say." _Miss Garnett_: "Yes, it _is_ rather silly, but I suppose the author thought she had to do something." _Miss Ramsey_: "And disgusting. A married man, that way! I don't see any comparison with Mr. Ashley." _Miss Garnett_: "No, there really isn't any. Emily has never asked you to give him up. And besides, Peg Woffington really liked him a little--loved him, in fact." _Miss Ramsey_: "And I _don't_ like Mr. Ashley at all. Of course I respect him--and I admire his intellect; there's no question about his being handsome; but I have never thought of him for a moment in any other way; and now I can't even respect him." _Miss Garnett_: "Nobody could. I'm sure Emily would be welcome to him as far as _I_ was concerned. But he has never been about with me so much as he has with you, and I don't wonder you feel indignant." _Miss Ramsey_, coldly: "I don't feel indignant. I wish to be just." _Miss Garnett_: "Yes, that is what I mean. And poor Emily is so uninteresting! In the play that Kentucky Summers does, she is perfectly fascinating at first, and you can see why the poor girl's fiancé should be so taken with her. But I'm sure no one could say you had ever given Mr. Ashley the least encouragement. It would be pure justice on your part. I think you are grand! I shall always be proud of knowing what you were going to do." _Miss Ramsey_, after some moments of snubbing intention: "I don't know what I am going to do myself, yet. Or how. What _was_ that play? I never heard of it." _Miss Garnett_: "I don't remember distinctly, but it was about a young man who falls in love with her, when he's engaged to another girl, and she determines, as soon as she finds it out, to disgust him, so that he will go back to the other girl, don't you know." _Miss Ramsey_: "That sounds rather more practical than the Peg Woffington plan. What does she do?" _Miss Garnett_: "Nothing you'd like to do." _Miss Ramsey_: "I'd like to do something in such a cause. What does she do?"