"My dear," she said, "you can't realize what you are saying. The stage has always been a hotbed of immorality from the very beginning of theatrical art, and nothing can reform it."
"Reform it," echoed Mrs. Staggchase, suavely; "we don't want to reform it. Nothing would so surely ruin the actor's art as the reformation of his morals."
"Oh, my dear!" remonstrated Mrs. Ranger.
"Really, Diana," Mrs. Frostwinch said, good-naturedly, "your sentiments are too shocking for belief."
"But she doesn't mean them," added Mrs. Ranger.
"I am sorry to shock anybody," the hostess responded, "but I really do mean what I say. Not that I can see," she added, "that society can afford to be too squeamish on the question of morals."
A look of genuine distress began to shadow
Mrs. Ranger's face, and it deepened as Miss Merrivale said, flippantly,—
"Is Boston such an abandoned place?"
"Really, Diana," the old gentlewoman remarked, with a manner in which playfulness and earnestness were pretty equally mingled, "I don't think you ought to talk so before these girls. When I was your age, half a century ago, it wouldn't have been considered at all proper."