'Clever!' said Ladywell--the young man who had been one of the shooting-
party at Sandbourne--'they are marvellously brilliant.'

'She is rather warm in her assumed character.'

'That's a sign of her actual coldness; she lets off her feeling in
theoretic grooves, and there is sure to be none left for practical ones.
Whatever seems to be the most prominent vice, or the most prominent
virtue in anybody's writing is the one thing you are safest from in
personal dealings with the writer.'

'O, I don't mean to call her warmth of feeling a vice or virtue exactly--'

'I agree with you,' said Neigh to the last speaker but one, in tones as
emphatic as they possibly could be without losing their proper character
of indifference to the whole matter. 'Warm sentiment of any sort,
whenever we have it, disturbs us too much to leave us repose enough for
writing it down.'

'I am sure, when I was at the ardent age,' said the mistress of the
house, in a tone of pleasantly agreeing with every one, particularly
those who were diametrically opposed to each other, 'I could no more have
printed such emotions and made them public than I--could have helped
privately feeling them.'

'I wonder if she has gone through half she says? If so, what an
experience!'

'O no--not at all likely,' said Mr. Neigh. 'It is as risky to calculate
people's ways of living from their writings as their incomes from their