Indeed, the retirement of their life since their engagement had made her so sensitive, that she was not exaggerating her case.
She found an ally in Helen, who proceeded to expound her views of the human race, as she regarded with complacency the pyramid of variegated fruits in the centre of the table.

It wasn't that they were cruel, or meant to hurt, or even stupid exactly; but she had always found that the ordinary person had so little emotion in his own life that the scent of it in the lives of others was like the scent of blood in the nostrils of a bloodhound.

Warming to the theme, she continued: "Directly anything happens--it may be a marriage, or a birth, or a death--on the whole they prefer it to be a death--every one wants to see you.

They insist upon seeing you.

They've got nothing to say; they don't care a rap for you; but you've got to go to lunch or to tea or to dinner, and if you don't you're damned.