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your guests right merrily. I think your mother is very wise to encourage the match. And the right sort of family to go into. Walter Milbanke is as good a fellow as there is going; got a snug conveyancing practice left by his father. His mother is rich. Dolly's people are in good society and well off, and Mrs. Milbanke is one of the most charming and agreeable of hosts. Why don't you settle it all, Phil? You are the sort of young fellow who should get married. You want sympathy, and you want a comfortable and well-managed home."
"She is a delightful girl, Dolly as you say, Dick, very pretty. I am sure she is generous, in spite of that suggestion of worldliness that comes out in her conversation. But she is not like that with me. I think it is part of the current coin of Society; but I hate Society."
"No, you don't, old chap ; you hate what people call Society, but you like what we call Society, what your mother calls Society, what my wife calls Society ; you enjoy that, and you can make your own set. When you marry Dolly, you can interpret your own idea of Society, and translate it as you please. Come, old fellow, don't brood over the gold medal; don't think too much of the model you want for the forlorn woman in the foreground. We will find her, or another as good. Come up into the East End one day (your tragic heroine has a Jewish cast of countenance), I will take you to a Jewish quarter where you will find several Polish faces that might sit for your Siberian picture."
"The despair would be there, perhaps," said Philip, "but not the beauty, not the dignity, not the strength, not the threat of vengeance in the eyes, not the deep strange reminiscence of suffering I saw in the mouth, and in the clenched, bony, but refined fingers; no, that is a face I should say one is likely to see once in a lifetime."
Let us follow Mrs. Milbanke and her sister home.
