"No! because he has such good horses. When a man keeps them, in such buckle too, there can't be much wrong with him."
"What is the reason that he can't live in a place like this, I wonder?" queried Miss Lexington in a musing tone. "A bachelor, too! Men don't seem to know when they are well off. He ought to try a dry year on one of our Paroo runs, if he wants a change. That would take the nonsense out of him. Our vile sex at the bottom of it, I suppose!"
"I did catch a whisper in London, before we left," said Miss Violet, cautiously.
"You always do," interrupted her sister. "I hope you don't talk to Pinson confidentially. What was it?"
"Only that a girl that every one seemed to know about wouldn't have him, and that he nearly went out of his mind about it: wouldn't hear of living in England afterwards."
"Poor fellow! he'll know better some day—won't he, mother? He must be a romantic person to go mooning about, wanting to die or emigrate, for a trifle like that."
"I sometimes wonder if you girls of the present day have hearts, from the way you talk," mused the matron. "However, I suppose they're deeper down than ours used to be. But I don't like my girls to sneer at true love. It's a sacred and holy thing, without which we women would have a sad time in this world. But, in our own country, men have done rash things in the agony of disappointment. You have heard of young Anstruther?"
"Oh yes, long ago. He went home and shot himself because of a silly girl. I suppose he's sorry for it now."
"Hearts are much the same, in all countries and ages, depend upon it, my dears; they make people do strange things. But let us hope that there will be no unruly promptings in this family."
"Quite so, mother—same here; but I suppose, as Longfellow tells us, 'as long as the heart has woes,' all sorts of droll things will happen. And now suppose we go and look at the stables before afternoon tea; I want to see the hunters and polo ponies. The garden we can see tomorrow morning."