Chapter I: Miss Isobel Ramsey and Miss Esther Garnett

_Miss Ramsey_: "And they were really understood to be engaged?" Miss Ramsey is a dark-eyed, dark-haired girl of nearly the length of two lady's umbrellas and the bulk of one closely folded in its sheath. She stands with her elbow supported on the corner of the mantel, her temple resting on the knuckle of a thin, nervous hand, in an effect of thoughtful absent-mindedness. Miss Garnett, more or less Merovingian in a costume that lends itself somewhat reluctantly to a low, thick figure, is apparently poising for departure, as she stands before the chair from which she has risen beside Miss Ramsey's tea-table and looks earnestly up into Miss Ramsey's absent face. Both are very young, but aim at being much older than they are, with occasional lapses into extreme girlhood.

_Miss Garnett_: "Yes, distinctly. I knew you couldn't know, and I thought you ought to." She speaks in a deep conviction-bearing and conviction-carrying voice. "If he has been coming here so much."

_Miss Ramsey_, with what seems temperamental abruptness: "Sit down. One can always think better sitting down." She catches a chair under her with a deft movement of her heel, and Miss Garnett sinks provisionally into her seat. "And I think it needs thought, don't you?"

_Miss Garnett_: "That is what I expected of you."

_Miss Ramsey_: "And have some more tea. There is nothing like _fresh_ tea for clearing the brain, and we certainly need clear brains for this." She pushes a button in the wall beside her, and is silent till the maid appears. "More tea, Nora." She is silent again while the maid reappears with the tea and disappears. "I don't know that he has been coming here so _very_ much. But he has no right to be coming at all, if he is engaged. That is, in that _way_."

_Miss Garnett_: "No. Not unless--he wishes he wasn't."

_Miss Ramsey_: "That would give him _less_ than no right."

_Miss Garnett_: "That is true. I didn't think of it in that light."

_Miss Ramsey_: "I'm trying to decide what I ought to do if he does want to get off. She said herself that they were engaged?"

_Miss Garnett_: "As much as that. Conny understood her to say so. And Conny never makes a mistake in what people say. Emily didn't say _whom_ she was engaged to, but Conny felt that that was to come later, and she did not quite feel like asking, don't you know."

_Miss Ramsey_: "Of course. And how came she to decide that it was Mr. Ashley?"

_Miss Garnett_: "Simply by putting two and two together. They two were together the whole time last summer."

_Miss Ramsey_: "I see. Then there is only one thing for me to do."

_Miss Garnett_, admiringly: "I knew you would say that."

_Miss Ramsey_, dreamily: "The question is what the thing is."

_Miss Garnett_: "Yes!"

_Miss Ramsey_: "That is what I wish to think over. Chocolates?" She offers a box, catching it with her left hand from the mantel at her shoulder, without rising.

_Miss Garnett_: "Thank you; do you think they go well with tea?"

_Miss Ramsey_: "They go well with anything. But we mustn't allow our minds to be distracted. The case is simply this: If Mr. Ashley is engaged to Emily Fray, he has no right to go round calling on other girls--well, as if he wasn't--and he has been calling here a great deal. That is perfectly evident. He must be made to feel that girls are not to be trifled with--that they are not mere toys."

_Miss Garnett_: "How splendidly you do reason! And he ought to understand that Emily has a right--"

_Miss Ramsey_: "Oh, I don't know that I care about _her_--or not _pri_marily. Or do you say pri_mar_ily?"

_Miss Garnett_: "I never know. I only use it in writing."

_Miss Ramsey_: "It's a clumsy word; I don't know that I shall. But what I mean is that I must act from a general principle, and that principle is that when a man is engaged, it doesn't matter whether the girl has thrown herself at him, or not--"

_Miss Garnett_: "She certainly did, from what Conny says."

_Miss Ramsey_: "He must be shown that other girls won't tolerate his behaving as if he were _not_ engaged. It is wrong."

_Miss Garnett_: "We must stand together."

_Miss Ramsey_: "Yes. Though I don't infer that he has been attentive to other girls generally."

_Miss Garnett_: "No. I meant that if he has been coming here so much, you want to prevent his trifling with others."

_Miss Ramsey_: "Something like that. But it ought to be more definite. He ought to realize that if another girl cared for him, it would be cruel to her, paying her attentions, when he was engaged to some one else."

_Miss Garnett_: "And cruel to the girl he is engaged to."

_Miss Ramsey_: "Yes." She speaks coldly, vaguely. "But that is the personal ground, and I wish to avoid that. I wish to deal with him purely in the abstract."

_Miss Garnett_: "Yes, I understand that. And at the same time you wish to punish him. He ought to be made to feel it all the more because he is so severe himself."

_Miss Ramsey_: "Severe?"

_Miss Garnett_: "Not tolerating anything that's the least out of the way in other people. Taking you up about your ideas and showing where you're wrong, or even silly. Spiritually snubbing, Conny calls it."

_Miss Ramsey_: "Oh, I like that in him. It's so invigorating. It braces up all your good resolutions. It makes you ashamed; and shame is sanative."

_Miss Garnett_: "That's just what I told Conny, or the same thing. Do you think another one would hurt me? I will risk it, anyway." She takes another chocolate from the box. "Go on."

_Miss Ramsey_: "Oh, I was just wishing that I had been out longer, and had a little more experience of men. Then I should know how to act. How do you suppose people do, generally?"

_Miss Garnett_: "Why, you know, if they find a man in love with them, after he's engaged to another girl, they make him go back to her, it doesn't matter whether they're in love with him themselves or not."

_Miss Ramsey_: "I'm _not_ in love with Mr. Ashley, please."

_Miss Garnett_: "No; I'm supposing an extreme case."

_Miss Ramsey_, after a moment of silent thought: "Did you ever hear of anybody doing it?"

_Miss Garnett_: "Not just in our set. But I know it's done continually."

_Miss Ramsey_: "It seems to me as if I had read something of the kind."

_Miss Garnett_: "Oh yes, the books are full of it. Are those mallows? They might carry off the effects of the chocolates." Miss Ramsey passes her the box of marshmallows which she has bent over the table to look at.

_Miss Ramsey_: "And of course they couldn't get into the books if they hadn't really happened. I wish I could think of a case in point."

_Miss Garnett_: "Why, there was Peg Woffington--"

_Miss Ramsey_, with displeasure: "She was an actress of some sort, wasn't she?"

_Miss Garnett_, with meritorious candor: "Yes, she was. But she was a very _good_ actress."

_Miss Ramsey_: "What did _she_ do?"

_Miss Garnett_: "Well, it's a long time since I read it; and it's rather old-fashioned now. But there was a countryman of some sort, I remember, who came away from his wife, and fell in love with Peg Woffington, and then the wife follows him up to London, and begs her to give him back to her, and she does it. There's something about a portrait of Peg--I don't remember exactly; she puts her face through and cries when the wife talks to the picture. The wife thinks it is a real picture, and she is kind of soliloquizing, and asking Peg to give her husband back to her; and Peg does, in the end. That part is beautiful. They become the greatest friends."

_Miss Ramsey_: "Rather silly, I should say."

_Miss Garnett_: "Yes, it _is_ rather silly, but I suppose the author thought she had to do something."

_Miss Ramsey_: "And disgusting. A married man, that way! I don't see any comparison with Mr. Ashley."

_Miss Garnett_: "No, there really isn't any. Emily has never asked you to give him up. And besides, Peg Woffington really liked him a little--loved him, in fact."

_Miss Ramsey_: "And I _don't_ like Mr. Ashley at all. Of course I respect him--and I admire his intellect; there's no question about his being handsome; but I have never thought of him for a moment in any other way; and now I can't even respect him."

_Miss Garnett_: "Nobody could. I'm sure Emily would be welcome to him as far as _I_ was concerned. But he has never been about with me so much as he has with you, and I don't wonder you feel indignant."

_Miss Ramsey_, coldly: "I don't feel indignant. I wish to be just."

_Miss Garnett_: "Yes, that is what I mean. And poor Emily is so uninteresting! In the play that Kentucky Summers does, she is perfectly fascinating at first, and you can see why the poor girl's fiancé should be so taken with her. But I'm sure no one could say you had ever given Mr. Ashley the least encouragement. It would be pure justice on your part. I think you are grand! I shall always be proud of knowing what you were going to do."

_Miss Ramsey_, after some moments of snubbing intention: "I don't know what I am going to do myself, yet. Or how. What _was_ that play? I never heard of it."

_Miss Garnett_: "I don't remember distinctly, but it was about a young man who falls in love with her, when he's engaged to another girl, and she determines, as soon as she finds it out, to disgust him, so that he will go back to the other girl, don't you know."

_Miss Ramsey_: "That sounds rather more practical than the Peg Woffington plan. What does she do?"

_Miss Garnett_: "Nothing you'd like to do."

_Miss Ramsey_: "I'd like to do something in such a cause. What does she do?"

_Miss Garnett_: "Oh, when he is calling on her, Kentucky Summers pretends to fly into a rage with her sister, and she pulls her hair down, and slams everything round the room, and scolds, and drinks champagne, and wants him to drink with her, and I don't know what all. The upshot is that he is only too glad to get away."

_Miss Ramsey_: "It's rather loathsome, isn't it?"

_Miss Garnett_: "It _is_ rather loathsome. But it was in a good cause, and I suppose it was what an actress would think of."

_Miss Ramsey_: "An actress?"

_Miss Garnett_: "I forgot. The heroine is a distinguished actress, you know, and Kentucky could play that sort of part to perfection. But I don't think a lady would like to cut up, much, in the _best_ cause."

_Miss Ramsey_: "Cut up?"

_Miss Garnett_: "She certainly frisks about the room a good deal. How delicious these mallows are! Have you ever tried toasting them?"

_Miss Ramsey_: "At school. There seems an idea in it. And the hero isn't married. I don't like the notion of a married man."

_Miss Garnett_: "Oh, I'm quite sure he isn't married. He's merely engaged. That makes the whole difference from the Peg Woffington story. And there's no portrait, I'm confident, so that you wouldn't have to do that part."

_Miss Ramsey_, haughtily: "I don't propose to do _any_ part, if the affair can't be arranged without some such mountebank business!"

_Miss Garnett_: "You can manage it, if anybody can. You have so much dignity that you could awe him into doing his duty by a single glance. I wouldn't be in his place!"

_Miss Ramsey_: "I shall not give him a glance. I shall not see him when he comes. That will be simpler still." To Nora, at the door: "What is it, Nora?"

II

NORA, MISS RAMSEY, MISS GARNETT

_Nora_: "Mr. Ashley, Miss Ramsey."

_Miss Ramsey_, with a severity not meant for Nora: "Ask him to sit down in the reception-room a moment."

_Nora_: "Yes, Miss Ramsey."