"Oh, there is no positive 'must' about it," says Brandolin, dubiously. "The name doesn't matter greatly, after all; it is only that I don't like the place to go to the Southesk-Vanes: they are my cousins, heaven knows how many times removed; they have most horrible politics, and they are such dreadfully prosaic people that I am sure they will destroy my gardens, poison my Indian beasts, strangle my African birds, turn my old servants adrift, and make the country round hideous with high farming." "Marry, then, and put an end to anything so dreadful," says Dorothy Usk. Brandolin gets up and walks about the room. It is a dilemma which has often been present to his mind in various epochs of his existence. "You see, my dear people," he says, with affectionate confidence, "the real truth of the matter is this. A good woman is an admirable creation of Providence, for certain uses in her generation; but she is tiresome. A naughty woman is delightful; but then she is, if you marry her, compromising. Which am I to take of the two? I should be bored to death by what Renan calls _la femme pure_, and against _la femme tarée_ as a wife I have a prejudice. The woman who would amuse me I would not marry if I could, and as, if I were bored, I should leave my wife entirely, and go to the Equator or the Pole, it would not be honest in me to sacrifice a virgin to the mere demands of my family pride." Lady Usk feels shocked, but she does not like to show it, because it is so old-fashioned and prudish and _arriéré_ nowadays to be shocked at anything. "I have thought about it very often, I assure you," continues Brandolin, "and sometimes I have really thought that I would marry a high-caste Hindoo woman. They are very beautiful, and their forms far more exquisite than any European's, wholly uncramped as they are by any stays, and accustomed to spend so many hours on all kinds of arts for the embellishment of the skin." "I don't think, you know," Lady Usk interposes, hastily, to repress more reminiscences, "that you need be afraid of the young girls of our time being innocent: they are _éveillées_ enough, heaven knows, and experienced enough in all conscience." "Oh, but that is odious," says Brandolin, with disgust. "The girls of the day are horrible; nothing is unknown to them; they smoke, they gamble, they flirt without decency or grace, their one idea is to marry for sake of a position which will let them go as wild as they choose, and for the sake of heaps of money which will sustain their unconscionable extravagance. Lord deliver me from any of them! I would sooner see St. Hubert's Lea cut up into allotment-grounds than save it from the Southesk-Vanes by marrying a _débutante_ with her mind fixed on establishing herself, and her youthful memories already full of dead-and-gone flirtations. No! let me wait for Dodo, if you will give me permission to educate her."