‘His family!’ she said, as all girls do in the same circumstances. ‘We know himself: and that is of more consequence than all the families in the world.’ ‘I say, Elly, shut up,’ said her brother, turning half round. Mrs. Egerton turned to him who offered this succour with eagerness. ‘Percy understands,’ she said, ‘he has more interest in it than anyone except myself, and he knows the world and that such things can’t be. They can’t be. Ask anybody. Ask your own connections, Jack; ask---- Mr. Cattley.’ She made a little pause before she said this, and gave a glance at the curate seated there with downcast eyes. Her voice faltered a little, but not with trouble this time. It was a sort of half smile which fluttered across the current of her speech. ‘He is romantic,’ she said, ‘but even he will tell you such connections can’t be.’ ‘I will not shut up,’ said Elly, ‘I am the person most interested. If you send Jack away, if he is such a fool,’--something in the freedom of sisterhood was still in her feelings towards her lover. ‘If you get the better of him, if you bully him or over-persuade him to go away, who is it that will suffer? Not you, Aunt Mary, nor Percy, nor anybody but me. Jack and I have always been the two who stood together,’ cried the girl, the tears glistening in her eyes like dew under sunshine. ‘You know, Mr. Cattley! The others went away, they fell into their mannish, stupid Oxford ways, but Jack and I have always stood fast. Jack! if you let them master you, if you let them send you away----’ She raised her hand, clenched into a small, rosy, but not unpowerful fist, threatening fate in general, and the evil ways of the world. Love had only come, in Elly’s mind, to strengthen the partnership, the comradeship that existed before. If he could be driven to desert her, if he could be such a fool! She could not help taking the tone still of the one girl among these boys, the girl whose standard of what was right and true was more absolute than theirs--less modified by possibility or circumstance--and who flamed with instant wrath upon any who would betray or fall away from that uncompromising rule. ‘My dear Elly,’ said Mr. Cattley, ‘that’s a very different matter. That was when you were at school.’ ‘To be sure,’ said Mrs. Egerton: ‘and Jack was a boy who might have been anyone’s companion. Oh, so he is now, do you think I doubt that? But, when boys and girls grow up, other questions come in. You can only marry in your own class. It is no rule of mine: it is a settled principle. Nothing but trouble ever comes of it when you marry out of your own sphere.’ John had borne all the discussion well. He had stood firmly enough, not shrinking, while he was torn to pieces and defended and defied. Now he spoke. ‘Perhaps I am wrong,’ he said, ‘but all that one reads and sees seems to show that for a settled principle that’s not so strong as it once was. If a man is well off, people make a difference.’