Smith?"

"I am afraid I hardly caught what you were saying. No pudding, thank
you," said that gentleman.

"I was saying that we moderns are really all much better than we seem.
There is far more hypocrisy of vice nowadays than hypocrisy of virtue.
The amount of excellence going about is positively quite amazing, if one
only knows where to look for it; but good people in Society are so
terribly afraid of being found out."

"Really! Can that be the case?"

"Indeed, it can. Society is absolutely frank about its sins, but
absolutely secretive about its lapses into goodness, if I may so phrase
it. I once knew a young nobleman who went twice to church on Sunday--in
the morning and the afternoon. He managed to conceal it for nearly
five years, but one day, to his horror, he saw a paragraph in the
_Star_--the _Star_ is a small evening paper which circulates
chiefly among members of the Conservative party who desire to know what
the aristocracy are doing--revealing his exquisite secret. He fled the
country immediately, and is now living in retirement in Buenos Ayres,
which is, I am told, the modern equivalent of the old-fashioned
purgatory."

"Good gracious! London must be in a very sad condition," said Mr. Smith,
in considerable excitement. "No, thank you, I never touch fruit. Things
used to be very different, I imagine, although I have never been in town
except for the day, and then merely to call upon my dentist."

"Yes, this is an era of change," murmured Lord Reggie, who had spoken
little and eaten much. "Good women have taken to talking about vice,
and, in no long time, bad men will take to talking about virtue."

"I think you are wronging good women, Lord Reggie," said Lady Locke
rather gravely.

"It is almost impossible to wrong a woman now," he answered pensively.
"Women are so busy in wronging men, that they have no time for anything
else. Sarah Grand has inaugurated the Era of women's wrongs."

"I am so afraid that she will drive poor, dear Mrs. Lynn Linton mad,"
said Mrs. Windsor, drawing on her gloves--for she persisted in believing
that the presence of Mr. Smith constituted a dinner party. "Mrs.
Linton's articles are really getting so very noisy. Don't you think they
rather suggest Bedlam?"

"To me they suggest nothing whatever," said Amarinth wearily. "I cannot
distinguish one from another. They are all like sheep that have gone
astray."

"I must say I prefer them to Lady Jeune's," said Mrs. Windsor