'Confessions of missed opportunities,' said Moulton.
'So, then, your creed is that love cannot endure,' said Lord Chadwick.
'The love that endures is the heaviest burden of all,' Harding replied incautiously. A silence fell over the lunch table, and all feared to raise their eyes lest they should look at Mrs. Lahens and Lord Chadwick.
'I suppose you are right,' said Mrs. Lahens. 'It is not well that anything should outlive its day. But sometimes it happens so. But look,' she exclaimed, laughing nervously, 'how Agnes is listening to St. Clare. Those two were made for each other. Celibacy and Work. Which is Celibacy and which is Work?'
'I think, Olive,' said the Major, 'that you are rather hard upon the girl. You forget that she has only just come from school and doesn't understand,'
'My dear Major,' said Mrs. Lahens, and her voice was full of contempt for her husband, 'is it you or I who has to take Agnes into society? As I told you before, Agnes will have to accept society as it is. She won't find her convent in any drawing-room I know, and the sooner she makes up her mind on that point, the better for her and the better for us.'
'Society will listen for five minutes,' said Lilian, 'to tales of conventual innocence.'
'And be interested in them,' said Lord Chadwick, 'as in an account of the last burlesque.'
'With this difference,' said Moulton, 'that society will go to the burlesque, but not to the convent.'
Agnes glanced at her mother, seeing very distinctly the painted, worldly face. That her mother should speak so cruelly to her cut her to the heart: and she longed to rush from the room—from all these cruel, hateful people; another word and she would have been unable to refrain, but in the few seconds which had appeared an eternity to Agnes, the conversation suddenly changed. Lilian Dare had returned to the idea expressed by Harding that he had only found happiness in work, and this was St. Clare's opportunity to speak of the opera he was writing.