She’s gay and sweet and unselfish, and good, sweet maid, and lets who will be clever. Lets them, but doesn’t want to have much to do with them. She’ll shut us all out, and try to shut Eddy in with her. She won’t succeed, because he’ll go on wanting a little bit of all there is, and so they’ll both be miserable. Her share of the world, you see--all the share she asks for--is homogeneous; his is heterogeneous, a sort of gypsy stew with everything in it. You may say that he’s greedy for mixed fare, while she has a simple and fastidious appetite. There are the materials for another unhappy marriage ready provided.” Jane was looking at the Prior’s Door with her head on one side. She smiled at it peacefully. “Really, Arnold----” “Oh, I know. You’re going to say, what reason have I for supposing that Eddy has ever thought of this young girl in that way, as they say in fiction. I don’t say he has yet. But he will. Propinquity will do it, and common tastes, and old affection. You’ll see, Jane. I’m not often wrong about these unfortunate affairs. I dislike them so much that it gives me an instinct.” Jane shook her head. “I think Welchester is affecting you for bad, Arnold. That, you know, is what the people who annoy you so much here would do, I expect--look at all affection and friendship like that.” “That’s true.” Arnold looked at her in surprise. “But I shouldn’t have expected you to know it. You are improving in perspicacity, Jane; it’s the first time I have known you aware of the vulgarity about you.” Jane looked a little proud of herself, as she only did when she had displayed a piece of worldly knowledge. She did not say that she had obtained her knowledge from Mrs. Oliver and the Dean, who, watching Eddy and Eileen, had too obviously done so with troubled eyes, so that she longed to comfort them with explanations they would never understand. It was certain that they were relieved that Eileen had gone, though the reason of her going had placed her in a more dubious light. Also, she forgot, unfortunately, to write her bread and butter letter. “I suppose she can’t spare the time from Hugh,” said Daphne. But she wrote to Jane, telling her that Hugh was laid up with hemorrhage, and had been ordered to go away directly he was fit. “They say Davos, but he won’t. I don’t know where it will be.” Jane, whose worldly shrewdness after all had narrow limits, repeated this to Eddy in his mother’s presence. “Has his wife got back yet?” Mrs. Oliver inquired gravely, and Jane shook her head. “Oh no. She won’t. She’s spending the winter on the Riviera.” “I should think Mr. Datcherd too had better spend the winter on the Riviera,” suggested Mrs. Oliver. “Isn’t it rather bad for consumption?” said Eddy, shirking issues other than hygienic. “I believe,” said Jane, not shirking them, “his wife isn’t coming back to him at all again. She’s tired of him, I’m afraid. I daresay it’s a good thing; she is very irritating and difficult.”