Mrs. Murray-Hartley took us to see the pictures and the collections of china and miniatures; and she talks about them all just like a book, and calls them simple little things, and you would never have guessed they cost thousands, and that she had not been used to them always, until she showed us a beautiful enamel of Madame de Pompadour, and called it the Princesse de Lamballe, and said so sympathetically that it was quite too melancholy to think she had been hacked to pieces in the Revolution; only perhaps it served her right for saying "_Après moi le déluge!_". Octavia was in fits, and I wonder no one noticed it. Then she said she must leave us for a little in the music-room, as she always went to see her children at this hour--they live in another wing. [Sidenote: _Gossip_] By that time Lady Doraine and Lady Greswold, and most of the others were down, and some of them looked as if they had been up awfully late. It seems they did not finish the baccarat until half-past three, and that Lord Oldfield won more than a thousand pounds. Mrs. Murray-Hartley had hardly got out of the door, when Lady Doraine said what a beautiful woman she was, and Lady Greswold began "yes and such tact," and Lady Bobby said, "and so charming," and Lady Cecilia--who was doing ribbon work on a small frame that sounds like a drum every time you put the needle through--looked up and drawled in her voice right up at the top, "Yes, I have noticed very rich people always are." Then they all talked at once, and by listening carefully one made out that they were saying a nice thing about every one, only with a different ending to it, like: "she is perfectly devey but what a pity she makes herself so remarkable," and "Darling Florrie, of course she is as straight as a die, but wearing those gowns so much too young for her, and with that very French figure, it does give people a wrong impression," and "It is extraordinary luck for dear Rosie, her husband's dying before he knew anything." I suppose it is all right, Mamma, but it sounds to me like giving back-handers. The French women never talked like this; they were witty and amusing and polite, just the same as if the men were in the room. [Sidenote: _The Gossips Rebuked_]