“Oh, don’t speak to me!” said Lady Jane. “Haven’t I taken you both up and done all I could to give you your chance, you two? And this is my reward. Stella has done nothing? Why, Stella has just compromised herself in the most dreadful way. You know what sort of a man Charlie Somers is? No, you don’t, of course. How should you, not living in a set where you were likely to hear? That’s the worst, you know, of going out a little in one _monde_ and belonging to another all the time.” “I don’t know what you mean, Lady Jane,” cried Katherine, on the edge of tears. “No; there’s no need you should know what I mean. A girl, in another position, that got to know Charlie Somers would have known more or less what he was. You, of course, have the disadvantages of both--acquaintance and then ignorance. Who introduced Charlie Somers to your sister? The blame lies on her first of all.” “It was--they were all--at the hotel, and Stella thought it would be kind to ask Mrs. Seton to a picnic we were giving----” “Lottie Seton!” cried Lady Jane, sitting down in the weakness of her consternation. “Why, this is the most extraordinary thing of all!” “I see nothing extraordinary in the whole business,” said Katherine, in a lofty tone. “Oh, my dear Katherine, for goodness’ sake don’t let me have any more of your innocent little-girlishness. Of course you see nothing! You have no eyes, no sense, no---- Lottie Seton!--she to give over two of her own men to a pretty, silly, reckless little thing like Stella, just the kind for them! Well, that is the last thing I should have expected. Why, Lottie Seton is nothing without her tail. If they abandon her she is lost. She is asked to places because she is always sure to be able to bring a few men. What they can see in her nobody knows, but there it is--that’s her faculty. And she actually gave over two of her very choicest----” “You must excuse me, Lady Jane,” said Katherine, “if I don’t want to hear any more of Mrs. Seton and her men. They are exceedingly rude, stupid, disagreeable men. You may think it a fine thing for us to be elevated to the sphere in which we can meet men like Sir Charles Somers. I don’t think so. I think he is detestable. I think he believes women to exist only for the purpose of amusing him and making him laugh, like an idiot, as he is!” Lady Jane sat in her easy-chair and looked sardonically at the passion of the girl, whose face was crimson, whose voice was breaking. She was, with that horrible weakness which a high-spirited girl so resents in herself, so near an outbreak of crying that she could scarcely keep the tears within her eyes. The elder lady looked at her for some time in silence. The sight troubled her a little, and amused her a little also. It occurred to her to say, “You are surely in love with him yourself,” which was her instinct, but for once forbore, out of a sort of awed sense that here was a creature who was outside of her common rules.