Oh, I must tell you one more thing. Running up to town the other day to get my hair---- I beg your pardon, Sarah! Running up to town the other day on business connected with the family estates (a mortgage on my life-interest in the settled funds--no matter), who should shake me by the hand but Miss Connie Fricker! Where had I met Miss Connie Fricker? Once--once only. And where, Sarah? Everywhere, unless I had withstood you to the face! And I don't know why I did, because she's rather amusing. In fact, at your house, dearest. Long ago, I admit. She has come on much in appearance, and she's going to marry Beaufort Chance. I know she is, because she says it--a weak reason in the case of most girls, but not in hers. _Quod vult, valde vult._ (A motto in one branch of our family, meaning 'She won't be happy till she gets it.') I am vaguely sorry for our Beaufort of days gone by. These occurrences, Sarah, prejudice one in favour of morality. She has gleaming teeth and dazzling eyes (reverse the adjectives, if you like), and she has also--may I say it?--she has also--a bust! She says darling Beaufort is positively silly about her. My impression is that darling Beaufort is handling a large contract. (Metaphor, Sarah, not slang. Same thing though, generally.) That man wanted a slave; he has got--well, I shall call on them after marriage. I spoke to her of Trix Trevalla. 'I thought she'd quite gone under,' says Connie. 'Under _where_?' would have been my retort; but I'm weakly, and I thought perhaps she'd slap me. It's as pure a case of buying and selling as was ever done, I suppose; and if the Frickers gave hard cash I think they've got the worst of the bargain. What's the moral, Sarah? Not that it's any good asking you. One might as well philosophise to an Established Church (of which, somehow, you always remind me very much). 'Open your mouth and shut your eyes'--that's out of date. Our eyes are open, but we open our mouths all the wider. That's superficial! In the end, each to his own, Sarah. I don't mean that as you'd mean it, O Priestess of Precedence. But through perilous ways--and through the Barslett shrubberies by night, knocking down his lordship and half a dozen things besides--perhaps she has reached a fine, a fine---- Perhaps! I hope so, for she had a wit and a soul, Sarah; and--and I'll call on them after marriage. And if that little compound of love and mischief named Peggy Ryle doesn't find twenty men to worship her and one who won't mind it, men are not what they were and women have lost their prerogative. Which God forbid! But, as my lord here would say, 'The change appears to me--humbly appears to me--to be looming--looming, Viola.'