"I am sorry to shock anybody," the hostess responded, "but I really do mean what I say. Not that I can see," she added, "that society can afford to be too squeamish on the question of morals." A look of genuine distress began to shadow Mrs. Ranger's face, and it deepened as Miss Merrivale said, flippantly,-- "Is Boston such an abandoned place?" "Really, Diana," the old gentlewoman remarked, with a manner in which playfulness and earnestness were pretty equally mingled, "I don't think you ought to talk so before these girls. When I was your age, half a century ago, it wouldn't have been considered at all proper." Mrs. Staggchase laughed softly. "But, nowadays," she returned, "the girls are so sophisticated that what we say makes no difference." There was a moment of silence while the servant changed the plates, and then Miss Dimmont broke out, saying, with unnecessary force,-- "I don't care who people are if they only amuse me, and I'll know anybody I like, whether they had any grandfathers or not." "Since when?" Ethel whispered significantly into her ear. Elsie crimsoned, but she gave no other sign that she had heard or understood the thrust. "Then there is Fred Rangely," Mrs. Staggchase remarked, in a tone so even that it showed she meant mischief. "He comes here to see Frances, and you can't think, Mrs. Ranger, that it's my duty to be rude to him just because he writes for the newspapers." "It is impossible to imagine Mrs. Staggchase being rude to anybody," quickly interpolated Ethel, with smiling malice; "and I supposed Mr. Rangely had won at least a brevet right to be considered in the swim from his long intimacy with social leaders." The hostess was too old a hand not to be pleased with a clever stroke, even at her own expense, and she took refuge in an irrelevant generality which might mean anything or nothing. "One learns so much in life," she said, "and of it appreciates so little." And Frances Merrivale looked from Miss Mott to Mrs. Staggchase with an uncomfortable wonder what allusions to Fred Rangely lay behind this talk, which she could not understand. XXIV THERE BEGINS CONFUSION. I Henry VI.; iv.--1.