风言风语一样，它永世无法自拔，因为表面上总是显得完美无缺。博尔顿太太就总是以道德评判者自居。“他是个坏家伙，而她却是位好女人。”然而，甚至通过博尔顿太太的闲话，康妮就能分辨出，那女人总是口不对心，而那男人反倒是嘴硬心软。但在传统道德的框范下，按照自己的同情心来衡量，博尔顿太太将嘴硬心软者斥为恶人，而把口不应心者视为好人。

For this reason, the gossip was humiliating. And for the same reason, most novels, especially popular ones, are humiliating too. The public responds now only to an appeal to its vices.

正因为此，蜚短流长本就是可耻的举动。同样因为此，大多数小说，尤其是那些时兴的作品，往往也是龌龊的。今时今日，只要能够迎合恶俗的兴趣，公众就会趋之若鹜。

Nevertheless, one got a new vision of Tevershall village from Mrs. Bolton's talk. A terrible, seething welter of ugly life it seemed: not at all the flat drabness it looked from outside. Clifford of course knew by sight most of the people mentioned, Connie knew only one or two. But it sounded really more like a Central African jungle than an English village.

尽管如此，从博尔顿太太的闲扯中，可以对特弗沙尔村有全新的认识。似乎丑陋的生活潜沸肆意奔腾翻涌，远非表面上看到的那样风平浪静。克利福德自然与其中绝大多数主人公曾经谋面，而康妮认识的却是寥寥。但这些事更像是发生在遥远的中非丛林，而不是大英帝国的村庄。

"I suppose you heard as Miss Allsopp was married last week! Would you ever! Miss Allsopp, old James' daughter, the boot-and-shoe Allsopp. You know they built a house up at Pye Croft. The old man died last year from a fall; eighty-three, he was, an' nimble as a lad. An' then he slipped on Bestwood Hill, on a slide as the lads 'ad made last winter, an' broke his thigh, and that finished him, poor old man, it did seem a shame. Well, he left all his money to Tattie: didn't leave the boys a penny. An' Tattie, I know, is five years—yes, she's fifty-three last autumn. And you know they were such Chapel people, my word! She taught Sunday school for thirty years, till her father died. And then she started carrying on with a fellow from Kinbrook, I don't know if you know him, an oldish fellow with a red nose, rather dandified, Willcock, as works in Harrison's woodyard. Well he's sixty-five, if he's a day, yet you'd have thought they were a pair of young turtle-doves, to see them, arm in arm, and kissing at the gate: yes, an' s