He spoke in a manner that made Marian look up in his face with surprise, and exclaim as if hurt, "Then you are really casting off poor old Fern Torr." The next moment she was sorry she had said so, for his namesake in "Kenilworth" could never have worn a more melancholy aspect than he, as he answered in a very low voice of deep feeling, "I am the last man in the world to be reproached with too little affection for Fern Torr." Marian was grieved, surprised, confused, but she had no time to find an answer, for the quadrille was forming, Edmund began a search for _vis a vis_, and she found herself dancing before she had made up her mind what she should have said if she could have replied at once; but it was too late to return to the subject, and she thought it best to begin entirely another, by asking, the next time they were standing still, how he liked the officers of his new regiment. "Very much, most of them," replied Edmund; "one or two are particularly nice people." "Do you like any as well as Captain Gresham or--" "New friends are not old ones," quickly answered Edmund. "O no, but if you knew them as well, are there any equally worthy to be liked? I want you to be comfortable there very much, as it is all our fault." "Don't say any more of that, Marian. Thank you, I am very comfortable--they are a very pleasant set." "Are there any of them here?" "Yes, three of them." _L'Ete_ cut short his speech, and when they paused again he began, "I mean you to dance with Dashwood--there that rosy tall boy standing partnerless behind the lady in a Swiss fly-away cap." "O I see," said Marian. "Yes, and don't be high and mighty with him." "High and mighty, when I am only shy." "Effects are seen, causes are not equally on the surface." "O Edmund!" "Well, he is a very nice right-minded boy, very shy himself; so don't be grand, for I have a great regard for him, and I want him to have a pleasant evening." Marian was considerably frightened by being told to be agreeable, the thing which of all others she thought the most difficult; but she would attempt anything for the sake of obliging Edmund, and making no answer, consoled herself with thinking how far off the next quadrille was. In the mean time, whilst she danced in the most business-like and least pleasure-like way possible, she was pondering on what she had to say on her own account to her cousin, and when the quadrille was over and he took her to the supper room in quest of ices, she eagerly began, "Then you think me wrong about my fancy dress?" "Shall I give your own favourite reply?" "Don't you think it a good thing to avoid all this folly and expense?" "And to prove Miss Arundel's lofty contempt for finery and foolery?" "I do not want to set myself up, but how am I to help thinking all this nonsense?" "A hard question, since no one attempts to say it is far otherwise; but after all, everything in this world is nonsense, except as a means of doing right or wrong."