"Good-bye, my dear. If you will quarrel, it isn't my doing." Then Sir Damask led Miss Longestaffe out, and put her into Madame Melmotte's carriage. "It's the most absurd thing I ever knew in my life," said the wife as soon as her husband had returned to her. "She hasn't been able to bear to remain down in the country for one season, when all the world knows that her father can't afford to have a house for them in town. Then she condescends to come and stay with these abominations and pretends to feel surprised that her old friends don't run after her. She is old enough to have known better." "I suppose she likes parties," said Sir Damask. "Likes parties! She'd like to get somebody to take her. It's twelve years now since Georgiana Longestaffe came out. I remember being told of the time when I was first entered myself. Yes, my dear, you know all about it, I dare say. And there she is still. I can feel for her, and do feel for her. But if she will let herself down in that way she can't expect not to be dropped. You remember the woman;--don't you?" "What woman?" "Madame Melmotte?" "Never saw her in my life." "Oh yes, you did. You took me there that night when Prince ---- danced with the girl. Don't you remember the blowsy fat woman at the top of the stairs;--a regular horror?" "Didn't look at her. I was only thinking what a lot of money it all cost." "I remember her, and if Georgiana Longestaffe thinks I'm going there to make an acquaintance with Madame Melmotte she is very much mistaken. And if she thinks that that is the way to get married, I think she is mistaken again." Nothing perhaps is so efficacious in preventing men from marrying as the tone in which married women speak of the struggles made in that direction by their unmarried friends. CHAPTER XXXIII. JOHN CRUMB. Sir Felix Carbury made an appointment for meeting Ruby Ruggles a second time at the bottom of the kitchen-garden belonging to Sheep's Acre farm, which appointment he neglected, and had, indeed, made without any intention of keeping it. But Ruby was there, and remained hanging about among the cabbages till her grandfather returned from Harlestone market. An early hour had been named; but hours may be mistaken, and Ruby had thought that a fine gentleman, such as was her lover, used to live among fine people up in London, might well mistake the afternoon for the morning. If he would come at all she could easily forgive such a mistake. But he did not come, and late in the afternoon she was obliged to obey her grandfather's summons as he called her into the house.