“I confess I am of Mrs. Waterbrook’s opinion,” said Mr. Waterbrook, with his wineglass at his eye. “Other things are all very well in their way, but give me Blood!”

“Oh! There is nothing,” observed Hamlet’s aunt, “so satisfactory to one! There is nothing that is so much one’s beau-ideal of⁠—of all that sort of thing, speaking generally. There are some low minds (not many, I am happy to believe, but there are some) that would prefer to do what I should call bow down before idols. Positively Idols! Before service, intellect, and so on. But these are intangible points. Blood is not so. We see Blood in a nose, and we know it. We meet with it in a chin, and we say, ‘There it is! That’s Blood!’ It is an actual matter of fact. We point it out. It admits of no doubt.”

The simpering fellow with the weak legs, who had taken Agnes down, stated the question more decisively yet, I thought.