ntion at all
about me.'

'In what sort of way, my dear?'

'In any way. Does he mean me to live here for ever and ever?'

'I don't think he intends to have a house in town again.'

'And what am I to do?'

'I suppose we shall stay here at Caversham.'

'And I'm to be buried just like a nun in a convent,--only that the nun
does it by her own consent and I don't! Mamma, I won't stand it. I
won't indeed.'

'I think, my dear, that that is nonsense. You see company here, just
as other people do in the country;--and as for not standing it, I don't
know what you mean. As long as you are one of your papa's family of
course you must live where he lives.'

'Oh, mamma, to hear you talk like that!--It is horrible--horrible! As
if you didn't know! As if you couldn't understand! Sometimes I almost
doubt whether papa does know, and then I think that if he did he would
not be so cruel. But you understand it all as well as I do myself.
What is to become of me? Is it not enough to drive me mad to be going
about here by myself, without any prospect of anything? Should you
have liked at my age to have felt that you had no chance of having a
house of your own to live in? Why didn't you, among you, let me marry
Mr Breghert?' As she said this she was almost eloquent with passion.

'You know, my dear,' said Lady Pomona, 'that your papa wouldn't hear
of it.'

'I know that if you would have helped me I would have done it in spite
of papa. What right has he to domineer over me in that way? Why
shouldn't I have married the man if I chose? I am old enough to know
surely. You talk now of shutting up girls in convents as being a
thing quite impossible. This is much worse. Papa won't do anything to
help me. Why shouldn't he let me do something for myself?'

'You can't regret Mr Brehgert!'

'Why can't I regret him? I do regret him. I'd have him to-morrow if he
came. Bad as it might be, it couldn't be so bad as Caversham.'

'You couldn't have loved him, Georgiana.'

'Loved him! Who thinks about love nowadays? I don't know any one who
loves any one else. You won't tell me that Sophy is going to marry
that idiot because she loves him. Did Julia Triplex love that man with
the large fortune? When you wanted Dolly to marry Marie Melmotte you
never thought of his loving her. I had got the better of all that kind
of thing before I was twenty.'

'I think a young woman should love her husband.'

'It makes me sick, mamma, to hear you talk in tha