"Well--it's come to be dishonourable--doubtful, certainly; but I don't suppose it looked so, step by step. He is very miserable, my poor old lord, I assure you. You know he has hardly ever come near us, or gone about with us. But what with this, and what with the drawback of Charles, and that odious Mrs Saint George, who hates me, and contrives to make every one think there was something queer about the debts which were paid when I took your amethysts, poor child! (not that there was anything but a few harmless fibs)--what with all this, though I've as much pluck as most women, and though people will swallow a great deal to have you at their parties, I really don't think I can fight it out any longer." "But when Sir Richard Grattan knows all this, will he still choose to connect himself with my father--and Charles--and--the rest of us?" "Why, Amethyst," said Lady Haredale, "that's what you have got to secure. You know we can't tell him any lies, because other men will tell him the truth. But he's very much infatuated with you, stiff as you have always been. Encourage him, be kind and loving to him, and he won't break your heart or give you up." Amethyst leant back in her chair with her hands lying on her lap. She was pale and very still, and when she spoke, her voice had a clear, satirical ring, as if she had been saying something clever in society. But, in truth, she was at the white heat of passion, so that she defied every instinct of natural reverence and shame. There is a sort of truth-speaking, of calling things by their right names, that means the entire rebellion of the soul. "I don't see much difference between any of us," she said. "My father condones his daughter's disgrace for the sake of a money advantage, and continues under an obligation to his son-in-law who has been wronged; you tell harmless fibs, and, among other things, you think it a trifle that a man like Major Fowler should have destroyed all Una's peace and freshness; Charles does things which I am never supposed to hear of, and besides, gets drunk in society. My half-sister married one man when she loved another, and I suppose never troubled to avoid him afterwards. I am going to marry a man for whom I don't care a straw, because he has money and can help my family, and I am to take advantage of having the sort of beauty which makes fools of men, to get him to take a burden on his shoulders of which he's sure to repent in future. Which is the worst of us? Even Aunt Anna will let that poor girl marry Charles `for the honour of the family.'" "Amethyst," exclaimed Lady Haredale, really shocked, "you never heard me say anything of that sort." "No--you _do_ it."