I'm sure I don't know what
they get by it, but I suppose it amuses them. There used to be a sort of
feeling that if a man behaved badly something would be done to him; but
that's all over now. A man may propose to whom he likes, and if he chooses
to say afterwards that it doesn't mean anything, there's nothing in the
world to bring him to book."
"That's very hard," said the elder lady, of whom everybody said that she
did not understand the world as well as her daughter.
"The girls--they all know that it is so, and I suppose it comes to the
same thing in the long run. The men have to marry, and what one girl loses
another girl gets."
"It will kill Lucy."
"Girls ain't killed so easy, mamma--not now-a-days. Saying that it will
kill her won't change the man's nature. It wasn't to be expected that such
a man as Frank Greystock, in debt, and in Parliament, and going to all the
best houses, should marry your governess. What was he to get by it? That's
what I want to know."
"I suppose he loved her."
"Laws, mamma, how antediluvian you are! No doubt he did like her--after
his fashion; though what he saw in her, I never could tell.
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