It occurs also, nine times out of ten, with persons of the disposition and character of Lady Fleetwood, that they are discreet at the wrong moment; the angel visits of discretion come at times when they are unserviceable; and so poor Lady Fleetwood found it. She had told her brother what she had better have left untold; but after having done so, she did not dare inform more trustworthy people of the fact, lest she should draw down blame upon her own indiscretion; and she resolved to let things take their course, especially as Maria and Colonel Middleton would both be at a distance from London, so that some time must pass before they heard indirectly of what she had thought fit to do. Indeed, she rather hurried all the preparations for their departure from London, for fear anything should force an explanation before they went; and very glad she was when she and her niece, safely packed up in the carriage, had passed the first turnpike on the great north road. CHAPTER XXXI. It one could really be a spectator, a mere spectator, of what is passing in the world around us, without taking part in the events, or sharing in the passions and the actual performance on the stage; if we could sit ourselves down, as it were, in a private box of the world's great theatre, and quietly look on at the piece which is playing, no more moved than is absolutely implied by sympathy with our fellow-creatures, what a curious, what an amusing, what an interesting spectacle would life present! But we never, in this fashion, see the whole of the play. Sooner or later we jump up on the stage and take a part in the acting, and are inclined, all throughout, to do so, like a child or a savage, or Don Quixote at the puppet-show.