"And that Captain De Baron was very loud," said Lord George, conscious that though his ground might be weak in reference to the Dean, he could say what he pleased about Jack De Baron. "Young men do laugh and talk, don't they, George?" "What they do in their barracks, or when they are together, is nothing to you or me. What such a one may do when he is in company with my wife is very much to me, and ought to be very much to you." "George," she said, again pausing for a moment, "do you mean to tell me that I have misbehaved myself? Because, if so, speak it out at once." "My dear, that is a foolish question for you to ask. I have said nothing about misbehaviour, and you ought, at any rate, to wait till I have done so. I should be very sorry to use such a word, and do not think that I shall ever have occasion. But surely you will admit that there may be practises, and manners, and customs on which I am at liberty to speak to you. I am older than you." "Husbands, of course, are older than their wives, but wives generally know what they are about quite as well as their husbands." "Mary, that isn't the proper way to take what I say. You have a very peculiar place to fill in the world,--a place for which your early life could not give you the very fittest training." "Then why did you put me there?" "Because of my love, and also because I had no doubt whatever as to your becoming fit. There is a levity which is often pretty and becoming in a girl, in which a married woman in some ranks of life may, perhaps, innocently indulge, but which is not appropriate to higher positions." "This is all because I laughed when Captain De Baron mispronounced the men's names. I don't know anything peculiar in my position. One would suppose that I was going to be made a sort of female bishop, or to sit all my life as a chairwoman, like that Miss Mildmay. Of course I laugh when things are said that make me laugh. And as for Captain De Baron, I think he is very nice. Papa likes him, and he is always at the Houghtons, and I cannot agree that he was loud and vulgar, or boisterous, because he made a few innocent jokes in Kensington Gardens."