"I wish you would have a son, though, G.; you know I am perfectly indifferent to Emmeline's boy."
"I shall never have any Strobridge children, Seraphim. Beatrice would faint at the idea. We only touched upon domestic pretences and got them all over with the very lightest effort in the first week. Besides, one would not want a Thorvil child—there is a mad streak in the whole family, I have often thought. I am much interested in heredity."
He did not add how greatly the afternoon had augmented this interest!
"Yes—did you chance to notice my secretary's hands?—The mother must have had a lover, of course."
"I don't think so—they seldom do in that class. They become so intolerably unattractive at once; nothing human could come up to the scratch. It is just a freak, or a harking back—many of the exquisitely aristocratic features one finds in old villagers, for instance, date from the droit de seigneur."
"The whole question of heredity is a frightfully serious one, of course, and we are in a stupendous muddle at the present time, with the inroads of the Lord knows who to muddy the stream."
"Do you suppose that is the cause of the dry rot which has got into us?—Or is it that we are really rusting out?"
"It is luxury and humanitarianism, and absence of national foes, which have sent us to sleep—and forgetfulness of dignity and duty. We eat the food of those whose fathers fed in our fathers' kitchens, and not because they are worthy and nice—that would be quite justifiable if so—but just because they are rich and have a superb chef, or because they are giving our younger sons a lift in the city—I loathe all money-making and trade—I am thankful that I, at least, can stand on my own feet, though I see the sad decadence in all around me—But I must not talk like this; it depresses and ages me!—By the way, Sterling had the impertinence to tell me that she thought my new toupées from Paris are too light!—What do you say, G.?"
He looked at her critically, at the clever, shrewd, painted old face and the ridiculous girlish wig—and then he kissed her hand again, and told her the truth. Something about her words touched him infinitely.