noured yourself is far more to the point than having
centuries full of honoured ancestors. Is he satisfactory? I can easily
forgive the ancestors for being unsatisfactory."

"I am sure he is a good fellow," said Lady Nottingham.

Jeannie got up and began walking up and down the room.

"Do you know, that is such an ambiguous phrase!" she said. "Every man is
a good fellow who eats a lot and laughs a lot and flirts a lot. Is he
that sort of good fellow? Oh! I hate milksops. I needn't tell you that;
but there are plenty of good fellows whom I should be sorry to see Daisy
married to."

There had started up in Jeannie's mind that memory of Paris, which had
made her hurry through and away from the town; there had started up in
her mind also that which had been so hard to get over in the autumn,
that of which she had spoken to Alice Nottingham, only to tell her that
she hoped she would never speak of it. These two were connected. They
were more than connected, for they were the same; and now a fear,
fantastic, perhaps, but definite, grew in her mind that once again
these things were to be made vivid, to pass into currency.

"Is he that sort of good fellow?" she asked.

There was trouble in her voice and anxiety, and Lady Nottingham was
startled. It was as if some ghost had come into the room, visible to
Jeannie. But her answer could not be put off or postponed.

"Something troubles you, dear," she said. "I can't guess what. Yes, he
is that sort of good fellow, I suppose; but don't you think you
generalize too much, when you class them all together? And don't you
judge harshly? Cannot a man have--to use the cant phrase--have sown his
wild oats, and have done with them? Mind, I know nothing definite about
those wild oats, but before now it has been a matter of gossip that he
has been very--very susceptible, and that women find him charming. It is
disgusting, no doubt. But I fully believe he has done with such things.
Is he not to have his chance in winning a girl like Daisy, and becoming
a model husband and father? Don't you judge harshly?"

Jeannie paused in her walk opposite her friend, and stood looking out
into the warm, soft night.

"Yes, perhaps I judge harshly," she said, "because I know what awful
harm a man of that sort can do. I am thinking of what a man of that sort
did do. He was no worse than others, I daresay, and he was most
emphatically a good fellow. But the woman concerned in it all was one I
knew and