‘That is one thing I object to in women,’ said Mr. Beresford. ‘The most sensible are so sensitive about those wretched little things that people say. What does it matter what people say who know nothing? Do you think a club is so much better than your apron-strings, as you call them? Why should you care for such vulgar reproach?’ ‘I don’t know why; we are made so, I suppose; and if women are sensitive, you must know the best of men will talk about our apron-strings; when all we are thinking of is what is best for the children--trembling, perhaps, and wondering what is best--giving all our hearts to it--some careless fool will spoil all we are planning with his old joke about our apron-strings--or some wise man will do it. It is all the same. But, never mind; I have locked up all my tremblings in my own mind, and left them free.’ ‘And you have not repented? You have more confidence in them now than if you had been less brave. But I wish Oswald had stayed at home with you to-night.’ ‘Oh, you must not blame Oswald,’ she cried, doubly anxious not to have her son blamed, and not to allow Cara’s father to conceive any prejudice against him. ‘It is in the evening he sees his friends; he is always ready when I want him--during the day. It would not be good for the boy to let him shut himself up. Indeed, it is my own doing,’ said Mrs. Meredith, smiling upon him, with one of those serene and confident lies which the sternest moralist cannot condemn. Mr. Beresford shook his head a little; but he could not undeceive the mother about her son, any more than she could confess how well she was aware of all Oswald’s selfishnesses. They were selfishnesses, to be sure; or, at least, the outside world would naturally call them so. To her the boy’s conduct bore a different appearance. He thought of himself--this was how she explained it. And how natural that was for anyone so watched over and cared for as he had been! Was it not, indeed, her fault, who had always supplied every want, satisfied every wish she knew of, and trained him, so to speak, to have everything his own way, and to think that every other way should yield to his? It was _her_ fault; and as he grew older, and his mind enlarged, he would grow out of it. This, though with an uneasy twinge now and then, Mrs. Meredith believed, and though as clear-sighted as anyone to her boy’s faults, thought less hardly, and perhaps more truly, of them than strangers did. But there was a little pause after this, and a sense in her mind that she had not convinced this critic, who considered himself more clear-sighted than Oswald’s mother, and internally half pitied, had smiled at her blindness. If critics in general only knew! for who is so sharp-sighted to all these imperfections as the parent who thus endeavours to convince them of the excellence of a child! ‘Edward gives up India, then!’ said Mr. Beresford. ‘I do not wonder; but it is a fine career, and with his connections and antecedents----’