“Well, perhaps you’re right; but it isn’t the climate altogether in her case, I should say. It’s the fearfully exciting life girls of her monde seem to lead nowadays. It’s that which brings on the wrinkles. You notice her face when she turns to the light.”
“Are women worse than they used to be, do you think; or is Josie more dissipated than the rest of her age and sex?” queried Stamford.
“I don’t know that, though they do say that she is the fastest of a very fast set; and between you and me, there have been some rather queer stories about her, not that I believe a word of them. But the girls nowadays do go such awful lengths; they say and do such things, you don’t know what to believe.”
“Ah! well, she’s young and happy, I suppose, and makes the most of her opportunities of enjoyment. My old friend, Bob Grandison, has been lucky, and his family seem to have everything they can possibly want.”
“Everything, indeed, and more besides. (Chablis, if you please!) Then I suppose you knew Mr. Grandison when he was not quite so well off? They say he got into society rather suddenly; but I’m afraid it doesn’t do the young people quite as much good as it might. There’s the eldest son, Carlo, as they call him—he used to be Charlie when I first knew them.”
“Why, what about him? Nothing wrong, is there? He seems a fine lad.”
“Well, nothing wrong yet. Not yet; oh, no! Only he spends half his time at the club, playing billiards from morning till night, and he’s always going about with that horrid gambling Captain Maelstrom. They do say—but you won’t let it go further—that he was one of that party at loo when young Weener lost five thousand pounds, and such a scandal arose out of it.”
“Good heavens! You horrify me! A mere boy like that! It can’t be true; surely not.”
“I heard it on good authority, I assure you, and other stories too, which I can’t repeat—really too shocking to talk about. See how empresse he is with that Mrs. Loreleigh! What men see in that women I really can’t think.”
“My old friend had both sense and right feeling once upon a time,” said Stamford. “He can’t be so weak as to allow all this.”