u know you're really rather
absurd. Girls wouldn't be fighting to dance with an old married man like
me. Altogether,--the way you regard me,--the way you imagine I'm the
marked-down prey of every woman you know,--would be too comical if it
wasn't so pathetic."

"Oh, really? So you say! You're thirty-five;--you're better-looking than
ever."

"Thanks. It's very kind of you to think so." He laughed rather
contemptuously. "What a fatuous idiot I should be if I believed you.
But--to go back to what we were talking about--it really is in a way
rather a pity you're gradually dropping everybody like that. It seems to
me that one should either have a cosy, clever, interesting little set of
amusing and really intimate _friends_; or else, a large circle of
acquaintances; or both. I'm not speaking of parties, for me. No man of
course cares about all that sort of rot; it's only for you; women like
going out as a rule."

"I didn't care much about the sort of society you introduced me to when
we first married. I didn't like any of them much."

"What's the matter with them?" he asked. He knew she had always felt
morbidly and bitterly out of it because she mistakenly believed that
everybody was interested in the fact that her grandfather had made a
fortune in treacle, and that her husband was Lord Wantage's nephew. As a
matter of fact, no one who came to the house cared in the slightest
degree about either of these circumstances (even if they knew them) but
merely wished candidly to enjoy themselves in a large, jolly, hospitable
house, owned by a very attractive man with a large number of amusing
friends and, apparently, a harmless and good-natured little wife. Mary
detested and soon put a stop to intimate or Bohemian friends who sat up
all night smoking, talking art or literature, or being musical; and she
managed rapidly to reduce their circle to a much smaller one at a much
greater distance. She had not a single intimate friend. With women she
only exchanged cards. "What's wrong with them all?" Nigel repeated, for
he was beginning to lose patience.

"Oh! their manners are all right. If you really want to know what I
think of the whole set--I mean that sort of half-clever, half-smart set
you were in--the barristers and writers, artists, sporting and gambling
men, and women mad on music and the theatre--well, it is that the men
are silly and frivolous, and the women horrid and--and _fast_! Some are
cold and just as hard as nails,