“As to Sinclair’s relations with Lady Vera, that is no news to me, my dear mother. How can a girl remain ignorant of these scandals after one London season? If the friends or enemies of the man or the woman do not tell her all about it, it is very easy for her to find it out for herself. Women like Lady Vera are living advertisements, and they would no more wish to hide their intrigues than Epps and Cadbury would wish to stop the advertising of their cocoas. It is all part of the social business; and the pit and gallery would be swindled out of their sport were Society’s sewers to be thoroughly cleansed.”
“But it will always be the case as long as there exists an Upper Ten; and, after all, when we think of it, it was much worse in Charles II.’s time and under the Georges,” replied Lady Carey.
“I have no doubt it was so,” said Eva. “They were coarse, but we are suggestive; they were brutal in the pursuit of indecorous pleasures, we are complex in our vulgar dissipations. We combine the corruption of a Louis XV. with the casuist of a Loyola. The Georges were everything that is bad, I grant you, but they were not effeminate; they lived up to their standard of military chivalry, which we do not, although we pretend to believe in a military code of honour.”
“What on earth will you put in its place, child?”
“How suburban, Eva. I expect my grocer or my housekeeper to possess that _bourgeois_ quality; but a gentleman must have a higher ideal of chivalry.”
“There is nothing more exalted than perfect honesty, dear mother; and the proof is that your grocer and your housekeeper cannot afford to live up to its standard, for it does not pay.”
“You are quite terrible, Eva, with your subversive theories! I cannot imagine where you picked up these queer ideas. I have always been most particular to surround you with what we were used to call well-bred people.”
“Yes, the Lady Veras and company,” retorted Eva.
Lady Carey ignored the remark and continued, “I always feared Gwen would have a fatal influence over you. But what could I do? It is so difficult to weed out one’s friends when one belongs to a certain set.”
“My dear mother, Gwen was saved in time, for she would have turned into a Lady Vera had not Society’s foundations suddenly collapsed. She had been taught all the tricks of a perfect woman of the world, and would have even outdistanced Lady Vera, for she possessed more brains and more animal spirits. So, you see, there is still hope for a Sinclair to develop into a paragon of virtue, to suit even your fastidious ideal of a son-in-law.”