‘I don’t know that you’re any the better for being out of the way. I am in the way. There’s a good deal being said,’ Lady Firmanence retorted with some asperity. ‘I believe some of you young men think it a positive crime to listen to the smallest scrap of gossip--it’s nothing of the sort. If you live in the world you must learn all you can about the people who make up the world.’ Saxonstowe nodded. His eyes fixed themselves on a toy dog which snored and snuffled at Lady Firmanence’s feet. ‘And in this particular case?’ he said. ‘Why was Lucian Damerel so foolish as to go off in one direction while his wife went in another with the man she originally meant to marry?’ inquired Lady Firmanence. ‘Come now, Saxonstowe, would you have done that?’ ‘No,’ he said hesitatingly, ‘I don’t think I should; but then, you see, Damerel looks at things differently. I don’t think he would ever give the foolishness of it a thought, and he would certainly think no evil--he’s as guileless as a child.’ ‘Well,’ remarked Lady Firmanence, ‘I don’t admire him any the more for that. I’m a bit out of love with grown-up children. If Lucian Damerel marries a wife he should take care of her. Why, she was three weeks on Darlington’s yacht, and three weeks at his place in Scotland (of course there were lots of other people there too, but even then it was foolish), and he was with her at two or three country houses in Northumberland later on--I met them at one myself.’ ‘Lucian and his wife,’ said Saxonstowe, ‘are very fond of having their own way.’ Lady Firmanence looked at her nephew out of her eye-corners. ‘Oh!’ she said, with a caustic irony, ‘you think so, do you? Well, you know, young people who like to have their own way generally come to grief. To my mind, your new friends seem to be qualifying for trouble.’ Saxonstowe studied the pattern of the carpet and traced bits of it out with his stick. ‘Do you think men like Damerel have the power of reckoning things up?’ he said, suddenly looking at his aunt with a quick, appealing glance. ‘I don’t quite understand these things, but he always seems to me to be a bit impatient of anything that has to do with everyday life, and yet he’s keen enough about it in one way. He’s a real good chap, you know--kindly natured and open-hearted and all that. You soon find that in him. And I don’t believe he ever had a wrong thought of anybody--he’s a sort of confiding trust in other people that’s a bit amusing, even to me, and I haven’t seen such an awful lot of the world. But----’ He came to a sudden pause and shook his head. Lady Firmanence laughed.