“Neither can I. Official life has its mysteries, and, hate them as one may, they must be respected; he ought n't to have sold out,--it was rank folly to sell out. What could he have in the world better than a continued succession of young fellows fresh from home, and knowing positively nothing of horse-flesh or billiards?” “I don't understand you, sir,--that is, I hope I misunderstand you,” said she, haughtily. “I mean simply this, that I'd rather be a lieutenant-colonel with such opportunities than I 'd be Chairman of the Great Overland.” “Opportunities--and for what?” “For everything,--for everything; for game off the balls, on every race in the kingdom, and as snug a thing every night over a devilled kidney as any man could wish for. Don't look shocked,--it's all on the square; that old hag that was here last week would have given her diamond ear-rings to find out something against Sewell, and she could n't.” “You mean Lady Trafford?” “I do. She stayed a week here just to blacken his character, and she never could get beyond that story of her son and Mrs. Sewell.” “What story? I never heard of it.” “A lie, of course, from beginning to end; and it's hard to imagine that she herself believed it.” “But what was it?” “Oh, a trumpery tale of young Trafford having made love to Mrs. Sewell, and proposed to run off with her, and Sewell having played a game at écarté on it, and lost,--the whole thing being knocked up by Trafford's fall. But you must have heard it! The town talked of nothing else for a fortnight.” “The town never had the insolence to talk of it to _me_.” “What a stupid town! If there be anything really that can be said to be established in the code of society, it is that you may say anything to anybody about their relations. But for such a rule how could conversation go on?--who travels about with his friend's family-tree in his pocket? And as to Sewell,--I suppose I may say it,--he has not a truer friend in the world than myself.” She bowed a very stiff acknowledgment of the speech, and he went on: “I 'm not going to say he gets on well with his wife,--but who does? Did you ever hear of him who did? The fact I take to be this, that every one has a certain capital of good-nature and kindliness to trade on, and he who expends this abroad can't have so much of it for home consumption; that's how your insufferable husbands are such charming fellows for the world! Don't you agree with me?” A very chilling smile, that might mean anything, was all her reply.