'Where are those persons to be found?'
'Wherever men and women are gathered together.'
'Let us come to the concrete. Would you suggest, for instance, that I should go to a residential hotel at one of our English watering-places, where sociability is made a feature of the prospectus, and where respectable mothers are to be found with respectable daughters?'
'Your lordship might do worse.'
'You think that at a place of the kind no questions would be asked, and I should be made welcome.'
'I recognise the bitterness of your lordship's humour, but am convinced that under such circumstances you might find more happiness than you may be disposed to believe.'
'Suppose they find me out?'
'Let me tell you one thing, old bachelor though I am. If you win a woman's love she'll forgive you much, especially those things you did before you knew her. It should not be difficult for your lordship to win such love as that.'
It was the wisest thing the old gentleman had said. It made me think.