"There! Didn't I tell you so? She is always saying something about my age. A man is the age that he feels." "No, a woman is the age that she looks. If you will quote things, quote them properly." "The age that she looks? That's so very variable. She's twenty when she enters a ball-room at midnight, she's fifty when she comes out at sunrise; she's sixteen when she goes to meet somebody at Hurlingham, she's sixty when she scolds her maid and has a scene with her husband!" Lady Usk interrupts him with vivacity: "And he? Pray, isn't he five-and-twenty when he's in Paris alone, and five-and-ninety when he's grumbling at home?" "Because he's bored at home! Youth is, after all, only good spirits. If you laugh you are young, but your wife don't make you laugh; you pay her bills, and go with her to a state ball, and sit opposite to her at dinner, and when you catch a cold she is always there to say, 'My dear, didn't I tell you so?' but I defy any man living to recall any hour of his existence in which his wife ever made him laugh!" "And yet you wanted me to ask married people together." "Because I wanted it all to be highly proper and deadly dull. Surrenden has got a sort of reputation of being a kind of Orleans Club." "And yet you complain of being bored in it!" "One is always bored in one's own house! One can never take in to dinner the person one likes." "You make up to yourself for the deprivation after dinner!" "My lady's very ruffled to-day," says Usk to Mr. Wootton. "I don't know which of her doves has turned out a fighting-cock." "That reminds me," observes Mr. Wootton. "I wanted to ask you, did you know that Gervase, when he was Lord Baird, was very much _au mieux_ with Madame Sabaroff? I remember hearing long ago from Russians----" Lady Usk interrupts the great man angrily: "Very much _au mieux_! What barbarous polygot language for a great critic like you! Must you have the assistance of bad grammar in two tongues to take away my friend's reputation?" Lord Usk chuckles. "Reputations aren't taken away so easily; they're very hardy plants nowadays, and will stand a good deal of bad weather." Mr. Wootton is shocked. "Oh, Lady Usk! Reputation! You couldn't think I meant to imply of any guest of yours--only, you know, he was secretary in Petersburg when he was Lord Baird, and so----" "Well, it doesn't follow that he is the lover of every woman in Petersburg!" Mr. Wootton is infinitely distressed. "Oh, indeed I didn't mean anything of that sort." "You did mean everything of that sort," murmurs his hostess. "But, you see, he admired her very much, was constantly with her, and yesterday I saw they didn't speak to each other, so I was curious to know what could be the reason." "I believe she didn't recognize him." Mr. Wootton smiles. "Oh, ladies have such prodigious powers of oblivion--and remembrance!"