'No, sir, for the men. But I daresay you have been very ill-treated in your time; only it doesn't matter to me what women you think ill of, provided you think well of me, so I will take the compliment. I assure you once again that I never mentioned your name to any American--or rather, I should say, to the only American I know. 'That is Mr. Foster,' said Mr. Dolby, with a slight effort. 'Yes,' said Miss Montressor, 'to Mr. Foster. I like him so much,' she added in a brisk parenthesis. 'Do you know him?' 'No,' said Mr. Dolby; 'never heard of him. What's his business?' 'O, I am sure I don't know. You don't suppose he talked of business yesterday, or would bother me about it under any circumstances. He was much too jolly for that. I hate your concentrated men who cannot think of anything but money-making, and cannot talk of anything except the way they make it.' 'You like the money though,' said Dolby. 'O yes, I like the money; but I like it as a result, just as one likes dinner. Dinner would be a nuisance if one had to see it cooked and know how it is done; so would money if one had to superintend the getting of it. Mr. Foster never alludes to business.' 'Ah, well,' said Mr. Dolby, 'that is no proof that he may not be in something that would clash with me, and it is highly important that he should not know of my existence,--here at least. Was there any one with him yesterday?' 'No; he came alone--I mean not with Duval and me in the mail phaeton--and was the life of the evening--such a charming man!' 'Married?' asked Mr. Dolby. 'Yes, married; and to a charming wife, if one may judge by the way he talked about her.' 'What wretched taste!' said Mr. Dolby. 'You hate a man who talks about business. I hate a man who talks about domesticities. I go so far with the Orientals as this, that men should not talk about their womankind or suffer them to be mentioned to them in general, except by very intimate friends, who ought to be mutual.' 'How do you know that we are not very intimate friends?' said Miss Montressor, suddenly assuming an air of coquettishness. The serious tone of the interview had been unduly prolonged for her taste, and she had no capacity for ethics. 'It must be a very sudden intimacy if it exists,' said Mr. Dolby angrily. 'I didn't say it was not; one doesn't take a lifetime to like a man, to find it out, and let him know the fact.' 'No,' said Mr. Dolby, 'one doesn't; nor does he take a lifetime to reciprocate, even though he has this charming wife, and talks the most arrant nonsense about her.'