‘She has apparently a very good prospect.’

’Yes; and it is through her being of that curious undefined character which interprets itself to each admirer as whatever he would like to have it.  Old men like her because she is so girlish; youths because she is womanly; wicked men because she is good in their eyes; good men because she is wicked in theirs.’

‘She must be a very anomalous sort of woman, at that rate.’

’Yes.  Like the British Constitution, she owes her success in practice to her inconsistencies in principle.’

’These poems must have set her up.  She appears to be quite the correct spectacle.  Happy Mrs. Petherwin!’

The subject of their dialogue was engaged in a conversation with Mrs. Belmaine upon the management of households—­a theme provoked by a discussion that was in progress in the pages of some periodical of the time.  Mrs. Belmaine was very full of the argument, and went on from point to point till she came to servants.

The face of Ethelberta showed caution at once.

‘I consider that Lady Plamby pets her servants by far too much,’ said Mrs. Belmaine.  ’O, you do not know her?  Well, she is a woman with theories; and she lends her maids and men books of the wrong kind for their station, and sends them to picture exhibitions which they don’t in the least understand—­all for the improvement of their taste, and morals, and nobody knows what besides.  It only makes them dissatisfied.’

The face of Ethelberta showed venturesomeness.  ’Yes, and dreadfully ambitious!’ she said.

’Yes, indeed.  What a turn the times have taken!  People of that sort push on, and get into business, and get great warehouses, until at last, without ancestors, or family, or name, or estate—­’

‘Or the merest scrap of heirloom or family jewel.’

’Or heirlooms, or family jewels, they are thought as much of as if their forefathers had glided unobtrusively through the peerage—­’

‘Ever since the first edition.’

‘Yes.’  Mrs. Belmaine, who really sprang from a good old family, had been going to say, ‘for the last seven hundred years,’ but fancying from Ethelberta’s addendum that she might not date back more than a trifling century or so, adopted the suggestion with her usual well-known courtesy, and blushed down to her locket at the thought of the mistake that she might have made.  This sensitiveness was a trait in her character which gave great gratification to her husband, and, indeed, to all who knew her.

‘And have you any theory on the vexed question of servant-government?’ continued Mrs. Belmaine, smiling.  ’But no—­the subject is of far too practical a nature for one of your bent, of course.’

’O no—­it is not at all too practical.  I have thought of the matter often,’ said Ethelberta.  ’I think the best plan would be for somebody to write a pamphlet, “The Shortest Way with the Servants,” just as there was once written a terribly stinging one, “The Shortest Way with the Dissenters,” which had a great effect.’