“I am ashamed to be of the same generation as yourself,” said Hurstmanceaux sternly. “Great heavens, man! You come of a good stock; you will be chief of a great house; your father is a gentleman in every fibre of his being; how can you endure to live as you do with your very name a by-word for the cabmen in the street? There is not a servant in your house, not a match-seller on your area steps, not a stableboy in your mews, who does not know the dishonor which you alone affect to ignore! She is my sister, I am ashamed to say; but I can do nothing with her so long as you, her husband, condone and countenance what she does. You have every power; I have none. Take her to Black Hazel, sacrifice yourself for sake of your children, shut yourself up there, try and lead a cleanly life and make her lead an honest one. Cease to be the miserable thing you are--a diseased maggot living on putrefaction?” Kenilworth listened imperturbably. To be likened to a diseased maggot did not distress him; it slightly diverted him in its appositeness. “The children?” he said softly and slowly. “You really think I ought to consider those children?” His pale, expressionless grey eyes, becoming suddenly full of unutterable depth of expression, looked up into his brother-in-law’s and said volumes without words. Hurstmanceaux grew red to the roots of his bright curly hair. After all, the woman spoken of, if this man’s wife, was his own sister, his favorite sister, the little one whom he had carried about in his arms when a boy, up and down the tapestried galleries and the oak staircases of the dear old house at Faldon. Kenilworth saw that emotion and despised it, but thought he would profit by it and do a bit of dignity. “My dear Ronnie,” he said almost seriously, “if I had married another sort of woman than your sister Clare, I might have become a different sort of man. It is not likely; still, it is possible. But, you may believe me, if she had married the best man under heaven, she would have been just exactly what she is. Sages and angels wouldn’t alter her. Don’t you fret yourself about us. We aren’t worth it--I grant that. We are of our time, and we shall get along somehow. Ta-ta, Ronnie; you are a good boy. Be grateful that I am what I am; if I were like you, _vieux jeu_, what a bother I should have made for our respective families long ago in the D. C.” And with a low complacent chuckle at having got the best of the argument, he dived under his seat for his hat, glanced at the clock, and, with an apologetic gesture of two fingers, left Hurstmanceaux alone in the morning-room with the chinoiseries and nipponiséries.