"Oh! will you?" said Naseby, looking at her with a mocking eye. "Yes, sir, I shall. Your secrets are not so difficult to know, if one _wants_ to know them. Heaven forbid, however, that I should want to know anything about any of you till Bertie is grown up! Now, please tell me everything. Who is the lady?" "Heaven forbid I should tell you!" said Naseby, drily. "Don't trifle any more," said Betty, laying a remonstrating hand on his arm; "they will be home from church directly." "Well, I won't tell you any names," said Naseby, reluctantly. "Of course, it's an actress--a very small one. And, of course, she's a bad lot--and pretty." "Why, there's no of course about it--about either of them!" said Betty, with more indignation than grammar. She also had dramatic friends, and was sensitive on the point. Naseby protested that if he must argue the ethics of the stage before he told his tale, the tale would remain untold. Then Betty, subdued, fell into an attitude of meek listening, hands on lap. The tale when told indeed proved to be a very ordinary affair, marked out perhaps a trifle from the ruck by the facts that there was another pretender in the field with whom Ancoats had already had one scene in public, and would probably have more; that Ancoats being Ancoats, something mad and conspicuous was to be expected, which would bring the matter inevitably to his mother's ears; and that Mrs. Allison was Mrs. Allison. "Can he marry her?" said Betty, quickly. "Thank Heaven! no. There is a husband somewhere in Chili. So that it doesn't seem to be a question of driving Mrs. Allison out of Castle Luton. But--well, between ourselves, it would be a pity to give Ancoats so fine a chance of going to the bad, as he'll get, if this young woman lays hold of him. He mightn't recover it." Betty sat silent a moment. All her gaiety had passed away. There was a fierceness in her blue eyes. "And that's what we bring them up for!" she exclaimed at last--"that they may do all these ugly, stale, stupid things over again. Oh! I'm not thinking so much, of the morals!"--she turned to Naseby with a defiant look. "I am thinking of the hateful cruelty and unkindness!" "To his mother?" said Naseby. He shrugged his shoulders. Betty allowed herself an outburst. Her little hand trembled on her knee. Naseby did not reply. Not that he disagreed; far from it. Under his young and careless manner he was already a person of settled character, cherishing a number of strong convictions. But since it had become the fashion to talk as frankly of a matter of this kind to your married-women friends as to anybody else, he thought that the women should take it with more equanimity.