.
I'll say you've been told who did kill Mr. Hobart, only it was under the
seal, so you can't say. Shall I?'

'By all means, if you like.'

Then Aunt Cynthia chased off after another exciting subject, and that was
all about Gideon.

2

I came away early (about eleven, that is, which is very early for one of
Chloe's evenings, which don't end till summer dawn) feeling more worried
than ever about Gideon. If the gossip about him had penetrated from Lady
Pinkerton's circle to my aunt's, it must be pretty widespread. I was
angry with Aunt Cynthia, and a little with every one I had met that
evening. They were so cheerful, so content with things as they were,
finding all the world such a screaming farce.... I sometimes get my
family on my nerves, when I go there straight from Covent Garden and its
slum babies, and see them spending and squandering and being
irresponsible and dissolute and not caring twopence for the way
two-thirds of the world live. There was Wycombe to-night, with a long
story to tell me about his debts and his amours (he's going to be
co-respondent in a divorce case directly), and Chloe, as hard as nails
beneath her pretty ways, and simply out for a good time, and Aunt
Cynthia, with half the gossip of London spouting out of her like a
geyser, and Diana, who might turn out fine beyond description or
degenerate into a mere selfish rake (it won't be my father's and Chloe's
fault if she doesn't do the latter), and my Uncle Ferdinand in purple and
fine linen, a prince of the Church, and Tony already booked for a
political career, with his chief's shady secrets in his keeping to show
him the way it's done. And they bandied about among them the name of a
man who was worth the lot of them together, and repeated silly rhymes
which might hang him.... It was a little more than I could stand.

One is so queer about one's family. I'm inclined to think every one is.
Often I fit in with mine perfectly, and love to see them, and find them
immensely refreshing after Covent Garden and parish shop. And then
another time they'll be on my nerves and I feel glad I'm out of it all.
And another time again I'm jealous of them, and wish I had Wycombe's or
Tony's chances of doing something in the world other than what I am
doing. That, of course, is sheer vulgar covetousness and grab. It comes
on sometimes when I am tired, or bored, and the parish seems stale, and
the conferences and committees I attend unutterably profitless,