Lord Fallowfeild smiled, settling himself back in the corner of the wide sofa and crossing his long legs. He had thought more deeply on a good many subjects than the majority of his acquaintance supposed; with the consequence that he occasionally surprised his fellow-peers by the acuteness of his observations in debate. Lord Fallowfeild, it may be added, took his recently acquired office of hereditary legislator with a commendable mixture of humour and seriousness.
"Their position is an anomalous one," he said; "and an anomalous position is inevitably a difficult one—ought to be SO; in my opinion. But that's not to the point. We were talking, not about the episcopal ladies, but about this little business of Kathleen's. So you believe Lady Sokeington has views and intentions?"
"I know that she has. But you see, Shotover," Lady Constance went on, returning to the name which that gentleman had rendered somewhat notorious in earlier years by a record in sport, in debts, in amours, and in irresistible sweetness of temper—"I want to be quite sure he is really good. Because the affair has not gone very far yet and it might be put a stop to—at least I hope and think it might—without making darling Kathleen too dreadfully unhappy. You do believe he really is good?"
Lord Fallowfeild leaned forward and rubbed a hardly perceptible atom of fluff off his left trouser leg just above the ankle.
"My dear Con," he answered, "you are very charming, but you are a trifle embarrassing, too, you know. Haven't you learned, even at this time of day, that very few men in our world are good in a good woman's sense of the word?"
Lady Constance's smooth forehead puckered into fine little lines.
"Shotover, dear," she said, "you're not getting embittered, I hope?"
"Me? Bless you, no, never in life!" he returned, smiling very reassuringly at her. "Don't worry yourself under that head. I quarrel with nobody and nothing, not even the consequences of my past iniquities. It is a very just world, take it all round, and has been kinder to me than I deserve."
"Oh! but you do nothing, you—you are what—you won't think me rude, Shotover?—what the boys call 'very decent' now."
Lady Constance spoke hurriedly, her colour rising in the most engaging manner.