'We must give dinner-parties, and giving dinner-parties must have what looks like a silver soup-tureen on the table.' 'What an explosion of gentility!' exclaimed Sylvana. 'My dear, hitherto we have not been in a position to buy a tureen. Now it is somewhat different.' 'Oh! because we have a paying pupil whom you can trot out. How long is she to be with us? Perhaps a month, perhaps may not come back to us at all, and then away flies this butler with the soup-tureen under his arm, and the last state of the Tomkin-Joneses is worse than the first.' 'My dear, don't be profane.' 'I am stating a fact. But how do you know that the girl Winefred is a fit person for you to patronise?' asked Miss Jones, with a malicious intonation in her voice. 'She is related to the Finnborough family.' 'Have the Finnboroughs acknowledged her?' 'They are not in Bath at present. When they learn how greatly admired she is and how much she is talked about――――' 'Because of her dialect.' 'No, Sylvana, because of her beauty. How can you be so disagreeable?' 'Mother, send back the tureen as not suited, and cancel your engagement to the butler.' 'Sylvana! how offensively you put things! I am not engaged to any butler. It is the butler who is engaged by me.' 'Well, rid yourself of both.' 'I cannot; I have bought the plated tureen.' 'And the butler, bought also?' 'Engaged, as I said.' 'Then you are throwing away money that we can ill afford. When young Maskell came of age his father had a blaze of fireworks, and afterwards informed the youth he had nothing to give him and nothing to leave him; his inheritance was debts.' 'There is no analogy in the cases.' 'You want to blaze out, mother, before you know that with any self-respect you can keep Winefred in the house.' 'Indeed!' 'Indeed, yes. I have received some information. I have an old school friend at Axminster, and I have inquired of her about the Holwoods.' 'Axminster is not Axmouth.' 'It is on the same river.' 'So are Pangborne and Tilbury. You do not inquire at one place relative to persons at the other. Besides, I will trouble you to mind your own business and not be so officious as to inquire into things that in no way concern you.' 'They do concern me, mamma. We have――or rather have not――this girl in the house, and she is involving you in soup-tureens and butlers.' 'I want to know nothing of what you have been inquiring after.' 'Of course you do not. After having spent something like ten or a dozen pounds on a tureen. But I will tell you, nevertheless. My friend says that there are no persons of the name of Holwood, that any one knows, in the county, and the name is not in the _Court Directory_. As to their country seat, it resolves itself into a castle in Spain.' 'Mrs. Jose told me that they lived at the Undercliff.' 'There is no gentleman's seat so called. I further inquired of my friend――――' 'I want to hear no more.'