'Two months ago. How absurd for me to be in ignorance all this time! Well, I hope Mary will be sensible, and not marry till Mr. Hammond is able to give her a decent home. It would be so dreadful to have a sister muddling in poverty, and clamouring for one's cast-off gowns.'
Maulevrier laughed at this gloomy suggestion.
'It is not easy to foretell the future,' he said, 'but I think I may venture to promise that Molly will never wear your cast-off gowns.'
'Oh, you think she would be too proud. You don't know, perhaps, how poverty—genteel poverty—lowers one's pride. I have heard stories from Lady Kirkbank that would make your hair stand on end. I am beginning to know the world.'
'I am glad of that. If you are to live in the world it is better that you should know what it is made of. But if I had a voice or a choice in the matter I had rather my sisters stayed at Grasmere, and remained ignorant of the world and all its ways.'
'While you enjoy your life in London. That is just like the selfishness of a man. Under the pretence of keeping his sisters or his wife secure from all possible contact with evil, he buries them alive in a country house, while he has all the wickedness for his own share in London. Oh, I am beginning to understand the creatures.'
'I am afraid you are beginning to be wise. Remember that knowledge of evil was the prelude to the Fall. Well, good-bye.'
'Won't you stay to lunch?'
'No, thanks, I never lunch—frightful waste of time. I shall drop in at the Haute Gomme and take a cup of tea later on.'
The Haute Gomme was a new club in Piccadilly, which Maulevrier and some of his friends affected.