.'

'Don't say--dropped,' exclaimed the baronet.

'I do say dropped, Sir Damask. I thought we should have understood
each other;--your wife and I. But we haven't. Wherever she might have
gone, I should have made it my business to see her; but she feels
differently. Good-bye.'

'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 mark