"Of course, papa, we all know what you mean," Lady Louisa interposed, with a certain loftiness and, it must be owned, asperity. "I have never pretended there was not something one had to get accustomed to. But really you forget all about it almost immediately—every one does—one can see that—don't they, Alicia? If you had met Sir Richard everywhere, as we have this season, you would realise how very very soon that is quite forgotten."
"Is it, though?" said Lord Fallowfeild somewhat incredulously. His face had returned to a sadly puckered condition.
"Yes, I assure you, nobody thinks of it, after just the first little shock, don't you know,"—this from Lady Louisa.
"I think one feels it is not quite nice to dwell on a thing of that kind," her sister chimed in, reddening again. "It ought to be ignored."—From a girl, the speaker had enjoyed a reputation for great refinement of mind.
"I think it amounts to being more than not nice," echoed Lady Louisa. "I think it is positively wrong, for nobody can tell what accident may not happen to any of us at any moment. And so I am not at all sure that it is not actually unchristian to make a thing like that into a serious objection."
"You know, papa, there must be deformed people in some families, just as there is consumption or insanity."
"Or under-breeding, or attenuated salaries," Mr. Quayle softly murmured. "It becomes evident, my dear father, you must not expect too much of sons, or I of brothers-in-law."
"Think of old Lord Sokeington—I mean the great uncle of the present man, of course—of his temper," Lady Louisa proceeded, regardless of ironical comment. "It amounted almost to mania. And yet Lady Dorothy Hellard would certainly have married him. There never was any question about it."
"Would she, though? Bad, old man, Sokeington. Never did approve of Sokeington."
"Of course she would. Mrs. Crookenden, who always has been devoted to her, told me so."