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René knew that she must have heard or read this somewhere, but he looked suitably impressed.

'Don't you think that Lady Aurora is very good?' he enquired.

'Oh yes, and the bed-ridden girl is terribly sweet,' she answered.

'Ah, that bed-ridden girl! James intended, with her, to serve up one of Dickens' most tear-compelling creatures. But she nauseated him so much half-way, that he changed her into the disagreeable character she all along, in spite of him, had been.'

This gave Essie a shock: for she saw that she had got somehow into deep waters. This was not an easy book to talk about, as she had supposed.

'I see what you mean, I think. The bed-ridden are always bores anyway, aren't they? But I did think . . .'

'No, there are no extenuating circumstances,' he told her. 'All his Dickens personæ, in any case, are terrible failures. Hyacinth—what a little hero to have! Could anyone be interested in such an unreal, comic little figure? His suicide is the duddest climax to a long, long yarn that it is possible to imagine.'