“Sheila, you give me to understand that I am a bear,” he said, in tones of injured protest.
Sheila laughed: “Have I told you the truth at last? It was no matter so long as you had ordinary acquaintances to deal with. But now if you wish to marry that pretty lady, you must be much more gentle if you are discussing anything with her; and if she says anything that is not very wise, you must not say bluntly that it is foolish, but you must smooth it away, and put her right gently, and then she will be grateful to you. But if you say to her: ‘Oh, that is nonsense!’ as you might say to a man, you will hurt her very much. The man would not care—he would think you were stupid to have a different opinion from him; but a woman fears she is not as clever as the man she is talking to, and likes his good opinion; and if she says something careless like that, she is sensitive to it, and it wounds her. To-night you contradicted Mrs. Lorraine about the h in those Italian words, and I am quite sure you were wrong. She knows Italian much better than you do, and yet she yielded to you very prettily.”
“Go on, Sheila, go on,” he said, with a resigned air. “What else did I do?”
“Oh, a great many rude things. You should not have contradicted Mrs. Kavanagh about the color of an amethyst.”
“But why? You know she was wrong; and she said herself, a minute afterwards that she was thinking of a sapphire.”
“But you ought not to contradict a person older than yourself,” said Sheila, sententiously.
“Goodness gracious me! Because one person is born in one year, and one in another, is that any reason why you should say that an amethyst is blue? Mr. Mackenzie, come and talk to this girl. She is trying to pervert my principles. She says that in talking to a woman you have to abandon all hope of being accurate, and that respect for the truth is not to be thought of. Because a woman has a pretty face she is to be allowed to say that black is white, and white pea-green. And if you say anything to the contrary, you are a brute, and had better go and bellow by yourself in a wilderness.”
“Sheila is quite right,” said old Mackenzie, at a venture.
“Oh, do you think so?” Ingram asked coolly. “Then I can understand how her moral sentiment has been destroyed, and it is easy to see where she has got a set of opinions that strike at the very roots of a respectable and decent society.”
“Do you know,” said Sheila, seriously, “that it is very rude of you to say so, even in jest. If you treat Mrs. Lorraine in this way—”