Lady Stutfield. I see what you mean. It’s very, very beautiful.
Lady Hunstanton. My dear child, you don’t mean to tell me that you won’t forgive your husband because he never loved any one else? Did you ever hear such a thing, Caroline? I am quite surprised.
Lady Caroline. Oh, women have become so highly educated, Jane, that nothing should surprise us nowadays, except happy marriages. They apparently are getting remarkably rare.
Mrs. Allonby. Oh, they’re quite out of date.
Lady Stutfield. Except amongst the middle classes, I have been told.
Mrs. Allonby. How like the middle classes!
Lady Stutfield. Yes—is it not?—very, very like them.
Lady Caroline. If what you tell us about the middle classes is true, Lady Stutfield, it redounds greatly to their credit. It is much to be regretted that in our rank of life the wife should be so persistently frivolous, under the impression apparently that it is the proper thing to be. It is to that I attribute the unhappiness of so many marriages we all know of in society.
Mrs. Allonby. Do you know, Lady Caroline, I don’t think the frivolity of the wife has ever anything to do with it. More marriages are ruined nowadays by the common sense of the husband than by anything else. How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly rational being?
Lady Hunstanton. My dear!