Ann is married and her husband has left her, and Jeames is married and his wife has left him, but as neither of them are rich enough to procure a divorce, and since (as I have said before) they are not in that state of life where their flirtations would be pleasantly winked at, I fear the poor woman will go down, down, down!
Birkhead was drunk the other night, could anything be more disgusting? All his life he has seen gentlemen with hard heads drinking a great deal more than is good for them; he has a weak one, but is indecent enough to wish to be convivial "below stairs" too, and, of course, came to grief. Now drunkenness, sitting hiccoughing at the head of its table, and able to offer its guests the choicest wines is one thing, and drunkenness in low life, without a cellar to bless itself with, is another. Faugh! send him away, and let him not come 'twixt the air and our nobility; that man will die in a workhouse.
Silvia comes stepping across the grass all in white; is she restless, I wonder, like me? Bad as my thoughts are I would rather have them than her company, so I move away towards the terrace; but she calls to me—
"Helen Adair! Helen Adair!"
She has that most excellent thing in woman, a low, sweet voice.
"I wonder what she wants with me?" I say to myself, as I go slowly towards the seat she has taken. Our conversation has always been of the baldest; if, indeed, she can ever be said to converse with any woman.
"Did you call me?"
"Yes; sit down here for a few minutes, it is miserable out here alone. How long have you had a fancy for moonlight walks?" she asks, leaning her shapely head against the wooden seat; "for my part I always hated the moon, a great empty, bare splendour that chills one."
