Lord Fallowfeild leaned forward and rubbed a hardly perceptible atom of fluff off his left trouser leg just above the ankle. "My dear Con," he answered, "you are very charming, but you are a trifle embarrassing, too, you know. Haven't you learned, even at this time of day, that very few men in our world are good in a good woman's sense of the word?" Lady Constance's smooth forehead puckered into fine little lines. "Shotover, dear," she said, "you're not getting embittered, I hope?" "Me? Bless you, no, never in life!" he returned, smiling very reassuringly at her. "Don't worry yourself under that head. I quarrel with nobody and nothing, not even the consequences of my past iniquities. It is a very just world, take it all round, and has been kinder to me than I deserve." "Oh! but you do nothing, you--you are what--you won't think me rude, Shotover?--what the boys call 'very decent' now." Lady Constance spoke hurriedly, her colour rising in the most engaging manner. "As decent as I know how, you dear soul," he said, taking her hand in his. "But that makes no difference to one's knowledge of one's own ways, in the past, or of the ways of other men." "But Alaric Barking?" "Neither better nor worse than the rest." Then Lord Fallowfeild shut his small and beautiful mouth very tight, as though he would be glad to avoid further cross-questioning. Lady Constance's forehead remained puckered. "It's dreadfully difficult when one's girls grow up," she said plaintively. "One can be comfortable about them, poor darlings, and enjoy them when they are in the nursery--even in the schoolroom, though governesses are worrying. They know so much about quantities of subjects which seem to me not to matter. One never refers to them in ordinary conversation; and if one should be obliged to it is so easy to ask somebody to tell one. And yet they manage to make me feel dreadfully uncomfortable and ignorant because I know nothing about them. But when they grow up----" "Who, the governesses?" Lord Fallowfeild inquired. "I never supposed they stood in need of that process--thought they started out of the egg all finished, as you might say, and ran about at once like chickens."