“Oh, never mind the people,” said Lady Leighton, “if you actually mean to give it up and throw me over; for it is me you ought to think of. And why? because I told you that Ned Saumarez, though he is paralysed, was as great a flirt as ever----” “Don’t let us have it all over again,” said Evelyn, “I take no interest in it. By the way I have just had a strange visitor--his daughter, Madeline. She tells me that your daughter is her dearest friend.” “His daughter? Oh, Rosamond! yes, she and Maddy run about everywhere together, and plot all manner of things.” “Are you not afraid of their plottings, two wild girls together.” “I afraid! oh dear, not I; they will probably both marry before they have time to do any mischief. That puts all nonsense out of their head. I know! they are going to walk the hospitals, and heaven knows what; relieve the poor and also see life. I never contradict them--what is the use? Somebody will turn up in their first or second season with enough of money and sufficiently presentable. And they will be married off, and become like other people, and we shall hear of their vagaries no more.” “They will then have every moment occupied, and more things to do than hours to do them in, Madeline, like you.” “Precisely like me,” said the woman of the world; “and an excellent good thing, too, Evelyn, if you would allow yourself to see it. Do you think it would be so good for me if I had more time to think? My dear, you know many things a great deal better than I do, but you don’t know the world. There are as many worries in a day in London as there are in a year out of it. That is, I mean there are in society, both in London and the country, annoyances such as you people in your tranquillity never can understand. I am not without my troubles, though I don’t wear them on my sleeve. I do what is far better. I am so busy, I have not time to think of them. There are troubles about money, troubles about the boys, troubles about--well, Leighton is not always a model husband, my dear, like yours. And it will be well for the girls if they do as I do, and don’t leave themselves too much time to think.” “They seem,” said Evelyn, glad to turn the seriousness of this speech aside and not to seem curious (though she was) about her friend’s troubles, “to exercise the privilege of thinking very freely at their present stage. But this poor girl has no mother, and no doubt she has been left a great deal to herself.”