What were men like, under the surface they presented to the women who gave them their friendship and confidence--men who lived in the world of Lassigny, yes, and of Francis Parry, and Dick, and most of those among whom she had made her friends? She felt shaken by this glimpse she had had into what lay beneath all the commerce of life as she had known it, the life of pleasure, innocent enough to her and such as her, but lived on a crust of artificiality through which one's foot might slip at any time. Beneath it there were untold depths of mire in which one might even be engulfed, as Beatrix had nearly been engulfed. Her pleasure in those days in Paris was spoiled. She longed for the sure ground of her quiet country life, in which one lived from day to day occupying and interesting one's self in one's duties and quiet pleasures, with the beauties and changes of nature to freshen the spirit, and all around the lives of others with which one could mingle, and trust them not to contain shameful secrets. So she thought of it, not yet taught by age and experience that evil is everywhere where men and women are congregated together, and may rear its head in a country village as well as in a foreign city. As she and Barbara were alone together that night, Barbara said seriously: "I can't think how B can ever have liked Lassigny. I never did. Although I didn't know anything in those days, I felt it about him all the same." Caroline suddenly saw Barbara with new eyes. She and Bunting had always been called 'the children,' and treated as such; and up till the time Barbara had left home, only three months before, she had been a tomboy, sexless almost, certainly with no appeal that would bring out the deeper feminine confidences. But she had always had a shrewd eye for character, and Caroline remembered that she had avoided Lassigny's society when he had stayed at the Abbey with a large party of guests, saying that there were other men she liked better. But now she was a woman, with a woman's sensibilities, though her childish freedom of speech and some of her childish ways still clung to her. The very alteration in her appearance, slight as it had seemed at first, marked a stage in her growth. She stood by the window, fingering a chain she had taken off. In her pretty evening frock, nearly as long as Caroline's own, she seemed already to be 'grown up.' Caroline saw her as a companion to her such as Beatrix had been, one whom she could treat as an equal in understanding, if not in experience, and not as a much younger sister from whom many things must be kept. "Of course I know what sort of woman that was he was with," Barbara went on. "You don't live in Paris even as I have to, without knowing the difference. I hate it all; and I hate him. Why couldn't B see?" "I don't know," said Caroline slowly. "But I didn't see either."