"And that's what I want to warn you against. It won't go down, Billy, not from you."
"Why not from me, in particular?"
"Oh, why do you make me explain things? Isn't it perfectly clear? If you're coming back among your old friends you'll have to be, after what's happened, more—how shall I put it?—more conservative, more like everybody else—than any one. You can't afford to have wild ideas, because people will only say that you re trying to drag us along the way you went yourself."
I renounced this discussion to ask the question that was chiefly on my mind.
"Vio, who's that man that just went out?"
She threw me a look from the other side of the room.
"You heard. He's—where can you catch on? He's Emmy Fairborough's brother."
"Wasn't there—wasn't there a divorce?"
"Emmy's? Yes; Lord Fairborough and she are divorced, but what difference does that make?"
"I wasn't thinking of Lady Fairborough. I forgot she had been a Stroud. I meant—I meant him."