"I do not know. Surely death and Heaven must be conditions of greater ease and happiness for him than for ordinary mortals."
"I am entirely of your opinion there. But from what I saw and heard of this man yesterday and to-day, I am disposed to think he has self-esteem enough to sustain him in any difficulty and carry him through any embarrassment."
"How are we to know how much of this self-esteem is assumed?"
"It does not matter whether it is assumed or not, so long as it is sustaining."
"What! Does it not matter at what expense it is hired for use? You amaze me, Sir Julius. You are generally sympathetic and sound, I think you have not been taking your lessons regularly under Lady Forcar. She would be quicker sighted in a matter of this kind." The girl shook off her air of abstraction and smiled at the young man.
"No, Miss Ashton, I am not neglecting the lectures of Lady Forcar, but of late they have not been much concerned with man. I deeply deplore it, but she has taken to pigs. Anyway she would talk of nothing but pigs yesterday, at your mother's. And even the improvement of my mind does not come within her consideration under the head of pigs, although I begged of her to be gracious and let it."
"That is very sad indeed. You must feel sorely slighted. And what has she to say about pigs?"
"Oh, I really couldn't think of half the distractingly flattering things she has to say about them. She made me miserably jealous, I assure you. She says she is going to write an article for one of the heavy, of the very heaviest, magazines, and she is going to call her article 'Dead Pigs and the Pigs that eat them,' and such harmless people as you and I are to be considered among the latter class in the title. Isn't that fearful. She says from this forth, her mission is pigs."
"I shall certainly read this wonderful article when it appears," said the girl with a laugh. "Can you tell me anything more about this article?"
"No; except that it was Mr. Leigh started the subject between her and me."