Page:In a winter city, by Ouida.djvu/165

 It is omniscient and omnipresent, microscopic and telescopic; it is a court-edition of Scotland Yard, and a pocket-edition of the Cabinet Noir; it speeds as many interrogations as a telegraph-wire, and has as many mysteries as the agony column of a newspaper—only it always answers its own questions, and has all the keys to its own mysteries, and what is still more comforting, always knows everything for "certain."

It knows that you starve your servants because you are poor and like to save on the butcher and baker; it knows that you overpay them because you are rich and want them to keep your secrets; it knows that your great grandmother's second cousin was hanged for forgery at Tyburn; it knows that your silk stockings have cotton tops to them; it knows that your heirloom-guipure is imitation, made the other day at Rapallo; it knows that your Embassy only receives you because—hush—a great personage—ah, so very shocking; it knows that you had green peas six weeks before anybody else; it knows that you have had four dinner parties this week and are living on your capital; it knows that when you were in