"I wonder if you ever had an illusion yourself—gave way to it, I mean. You were in love once—twice," I added hastily, in deference to Lady Atherley.
"Only once," said Atherley, calmly. "Do you ever see her now, Lindy? She has grown enormously fat. Certainly I have had my illusions, and I don't object to them when they are pleasant and harmless—on the contrary. Now, falling in love, if you don't fall too deep, is pleasant, and it never lasts long enough to do much mischief. Marriage, of course, you will say, may be mischievous—only for the individual, it is useful for the race. What I object to is the deliberate culture of illusions which are not pleasant but distinctly depressing, like half your religious beliefs."
"George," said Lady Atherley, coming into the room at this instant; "have you—oh, dear! what a state this room is in!"
"It is the housemaids. They never will leave things as I put them."
"And it was only dusted and tidied an hour ago. Mr. Lyndsay, did you ever see anything like it?"
I said "Never."
"If Lindy has a fault in this world, it is that he is as pernickety, as my old nurse used to say—as pernickety as an old maid. The stiff formality of his room would give me the creeps, if anything could. The first thing I always want to do when I see it is to make hay in it."
"It is what you always do do, before you have been an hour there," I observed.
"Jane, in Heaven's name leave those things alone! Is this sort of thing all you came in for?"
"No; I really came in to ask if you had read Lucinda Molyneux's letter."