_thought_ they were, poor mistaken man. I am not going to suffuse you
with blushes by explaining to you that there is what my nephew would
call a jolly good reason why, if you were not an early Victorian and
improved Thackerayian saint, you would not be best pleased at finding
yourself called upon to assist at this interesting occasion. Another
kind of woman would probably feel like a cat towards the little Osborn.
But even the mere reason itself, as a reason, has not once risen in your
benign and pellucid mind. You have a pellucid mind, Emily; I should be
rather proud of the word if I had invented it myself to describe you.
But I didn't. It was Walderhurst. You have actually wakened up the man's
intellects, such as they are."

She evidently had a number of opinions of the Osborns. She liked neither
of them, but it was Captain Osborn she especially _dis_liked.

"He is really an underbred person," she explained, "and he hasn't the
sharpness to know that is the reason Walderhurst detests him. He had
vulgar, cheap sort of affairs, and nearly got into the kind of trouble
people don't forgive. What a fool a creature in his position is to
offend the taste of the man he may inherit from, and who, if he were not
antagonistic to him, would regard him as a sort of duty. It wasn't his
immorality particularly. Nobody is either moral or immoral in these
days, but penniless persons must be decent. It's all a matter of taste
and manners. I haven't any morals myself, my dear, but I have beautiful
manners. A woman can have the kind of manners which keep her from
breaking the Commandments. As to the Commandments, they are awfully easy
things _not_ to break. Who wants to break them, good Lord! Thou shall do
no murder. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not commit, etc. Thou shalt
not bear false witness. That's simply gossip and lying, and they are bad
manners. If you have good manners, you _don't_."

She chatted on in her pungent little worldly, good-humoured way through
the making of a very excellent lunch. After which she settled her smart
bonnet with clever touches, kissed Emily on both cheeks, and getting
into her brougham rolled off smiling and nodding.

Emily stood at the drawing-room window and watched her equipage roll
round the square and into Charles Street, and then turned away into the
big, stately empty room, sighing without intending to do so while she
smiled herself.

"She's so witty and so amusing," she said; "but one w