Ball? She told Lord Brouncker that he might bring his daughters or send
them with a proper chaperon, but that she would not receive Lady
Brouncker who was a druggist's daughter, or some such thing, and as Tom
Wagg remarked of her, never wanted medicine certainly, for she never had
an h in her life. Good Ged, what would have been the trifling pang of a
separation in the first instance to the enduring infliction of a constant
misalliance and intercourse with low people?"

"What, indeed!" said Helen, dimly disposed towards laughter, but yet
checking the inclination, because she remembered in what prodigious
respect her deceased husband held Major Pendennis and his stories of the
great world.

"Then this fatal woman is ten years older than that silly young
scapegrace of an Arthur. What happens in such cases, my dear creature? I
don't mind telling you, now we are alone that in the highest state of
society, misery, undeviating misery, is the result. Look at Lord
Clodworthy come into a room with his wife--why, good Ged, she looks like
Clodworthy's mother. What's the case between Lord and Lady Willowbank,
whose love match was notorious? He has already cut her down twice when
she has hanged herself out of jealousy for Mademoiselle de Sainte
Cunegonde, the dancer; and mark my words, good Ged, one day he'll not cut
the old woman down. No, my dear madam, you are not in the world, but I
am: you are a little romantic and sentimental (you know you are--women
with those large beautiful eyes always are); you must leave this matter
to my experience. Marry this woman! Marry at eighteen an actress of
thirty--bah bah!--I would as soon he sent into the kitchen and married
the cook."

"I know the evils of premature engagements," sighed out Helen: and as she