e.

"Emily, what do you mean? Ah! here is our Bovril! I feel so delightfully
vicious when I drink it, so unconventional! You speak as if you disliked
our times."

"I hardly know them yet. I have been a country cousin for ten years, you
see. I am quite colonial."

"Poor dear child. How horrid. I suppose you have hardly seen chiffon. It
must have been like death. But do you really object to the green
carnation?"

"That depends. Is it a badge?"

"How do you mean?"

"I only saw about a dozen in the Opera House to-night, and all the men
who wore them looked the same. They had the same walk, or rather waggle,
the same coyly conscious expression, the same wavy motion of the head.
When they spoke to each other, they called each other by Christian
names. Is it a badge of some club or some society, and is Mr. Amarinth
their high priest? They all spoke to him, and seemed to revolve round
him like satellites around the sun."

"My dear Emily, it is not a badge at all. They wear it merely to be
original."

"And can they only be original in a buttonhole way? Poor fellows."

"You don't understand. They like to draw attention to themselves."

"By their dress? I thought that was the prerogative of women."

"Really, Emily, you _are_ colonial. Men may have women's minds,
just as women may have the minds of men."

"I hope not."

"Dear yes. It is quite common nowadays."

"And has Lord Reginald Hastings got a woman's mind?"

"My dear, he has a very beautiful mind. He is poetic, imaginative, and
perfectly fearless."

"That's better."

"He dares do anything. He is not afraid of Society, or of what the
clergy and such unfashionable and limited people say. For instance, if
he wished to commit what copy-books call a sin, he would commit it, even
if Society stood aghast at him. That is what I call having real moral
courage."

Lady Locke sipped her Bovril methodically.

"I see," she said rather drily; "he is not afraid to be wicked."

"Not in the least; and how many of us can say as much? Mr. Amarinth is
quite right. He declares that goodness is merely another name for
cowardice, and that we all have a certain disease of tendencies that
inclines us to certain things labelled sins. If we check our tendencies,
we drive the disease inwards; but if we sin, we throw it off. Suppressed
measles are far more dangerous than measles that come out."

"I see; we are to aim at inducing a violent rash that all the world may
stare at."