“Neither can I. Official life has its mysteries, and, hate them as one may, they must be respected; he ought n't to have sold out,—it was rank folly to sell out. What could he have in the world better than a continued succession of young fellows fresh from home, and knowing positively nothing of horse-flesh or billiards?”
“I don't understand you, sir,—that is, I hope I misunderstand you,” said she, haughtily.
“I mean simply this, that I'd rather be a lieutenant-colonel with such opportunities than I 'd be Chairman of the Great Overland.”
“Opportunities—and for what?”
“For everything,—for everything; for game off the balls, on every race in the kingdom, and as snug a thing every night over a devilled kidney as any man could wish for. Don't look shocked,—it's all on the square; that old hag that was here last week would have given her diamond ear-rings to find out something against Sewell, and she could n't.”
“You mean Lady Trafford?”
“I do. She stayed a week here just to blacken his character, and she never could get beyond that story of her son and Mrs. Sewell.”
“What story? I never heard of it.”
“A lie, of course, from beginning to end; and it's hard to imagine that she herself believed it.”
“But what was it?”