Sir George might not mind. This fashionable goddess and god were somewhat above human feeling, and could take their sport out of the discomfiture of others. But these others were troubled, and showed themselves in their worst colours, and unreasonable Lady Bell blamed Captain Fane as the cause. Why was he so stern in contradicting Mrs. Lascelles’s incredible story of Lady Kitty Lake? Where was the use of contradicting it at all, when nobody believed it, and when it was not meant to be believed? Why was he so rude to Sir George Waring? Lady Bell tried to make a diversion in the conversation as the boat was approaching Richmond. She began to remark upon the houses and their occupants. Then the attention of Sir George and Mrs. Lascelles became concentrated on a white house in the background, while they expatiated on the merits and misfortunes of its owner. “It is enough to make a fellow doubt all good,” protested Sir George, with something like melancholy energy, “to think of the fate of poor dear Lady Di, consigned from the tender mercies of a fool only to those of a brute!” “And she so clever to be twice taken in,” protested Lady Bell, with soft wonder. “She is another Mrs. Damer, Captain Fane.” She turned to Harry in explanation, thinking to propitiate the bear, and seeking to allay a little twinge of conscience where her sweeping censure of that gentleman was concerned. Had he not been attentive and kind to her on a recent occasion? By whose fault after all had he been suffered to fall into neglect, or to be twitted and tormented that day, until he had assumed an attitude of marked hostility to those around him? “We are speaking of Lady Di Beauclerk, who can paint like a Breughel or a Sneyders,” finished Lady Bell. “I dare say, sir”—Mrs. Lascelles came between the couple with her affectation of artlessness—“you prefer a simpler, shorter road to excellence. You think Lady Di would have been better employed if she had been tossing pancakes, or hemming dish-clouts.” “I don’t know about simpler, shorter roads,” cried Captain Fane defiantly, “but I confess I prefer straight lines, and I have no pity to waste on crooked ones. I do think that your paragon, Lady Di, would have been a vast deal better employed in bearing—ay, even in seeking to better the enormities of one sinner, than in making a trial, for a change, by the aid of the law of divorce, how she should like the enormities of another. And when she finds that she cannot abide the second any more than the first, she raises a precious pother, forsooth! because she is properly punished.” Lady Bell was aggrieved, even shocked, by this plain speaking. Lady Di had been so heavily punished for her errors, that she had arrived at their being condoned, and had come to be treated herself as a sort of cherished pet, not by her own set alone, but by wiser men and women.