"How sweet"; Lady Elliston was still a little confused, by her blunder, and by his words. "What a happy life you and your mother must have had, cloistered here. I've been telling your mother that it's like a cloister. I've been scolding her a little for shutting herself up in it. And now that I have this chance of talking to you I do very much want to say that I hope you will bring her out a little more."
"Bring her out? Where?" Augustine inquired.
"Into the world—the world she is so fitted to adorn. It's ridiculous this—this fad of hers," said Lady Elliston.
"Is it a fad?" Augustine asked, but with at once a lightness and distance of manner.
"Of course. And it is bad for anyone to be immured."
"I don't think it has been bad for her. Perhaps this is more the world than you think."
"I only mean bad in the sense of sad."
"Isn't the world sad?"
"What a strange young man you are. Do you really mean to say that you like to see your mother—your beautiful, lovely mother—imprisoned in this gloomy place and meeting nobody from one year's end to the other?"
"I have said nothing at all about my likes," said Augustine, smiling.