xt day, and finding what a very nice person she is?
Because it would very likely be at the seaside. But suppose any sort
of introduction of this sort--you know what we mean!

Well, the So-and-sos have slipped gradually into your life; let this
be granted. We need not imagine, for our purpose, any extreme
approaches of family intimacy, any love affairs or deadly quarrels.
A tranquil intercourse of some twenty years is all we need, every year
of which has added to your conviction of the thorough trustworthiness
and respectability of the So-and-sos, of their readiness to help you
in any little difficulty, and of the high opinion which the rest of
the world has of Mr. and Mrs. So-and-so--the world which knew them
when it was a boy, and all their connexions and antecedents, which,
you admit, you didn't....

And then, after all these years, it is suddenly burst upon you that
there was a shady story about So-and-so that never was cleared
up--something about money, perhaps; or, worse still, one of those
stories your informant really doesn't like to be responsible for the
particulars of; you must ask Smith yourself. Or your wife comes to you
in fury and indignation that such a scandalous falsehood should have
got about as that Clara So-and-so was never married to So-and-so at
all till ever so long after Fluffy or Toppy or Croppy or Poppy was
born! We take any names at random of this sort, merely to dwell on
your good lady's familiarity with the So-and-so family.

Well, then--there you are! And what can you make of it? There you are
face to face with the fact that a man who was a black sheep twenty or
thirty years ago has been all this time making believe to be a white
sheep so successfully as never was. Or, stranger still, that a woman
who has brought up a family of model daughters--daughters whom it
would be no exaggeration to speak of as on all fours with your own,
and who is quite one of the nicest and most sympathetic people your
wife has to go to in trouble--this woman actually--_actually_--if this
tale is true, was guilty in her youth ... there--that will do! Suppose
we say she was no better than she should be. She hadn't even the
decency to be a married woman before she did it, which always makes it
so much easier to talk to strange ladies and girls about it. You can
say all the way down a full dinner-table that Lady Polly Andrews got
into the Divorce Court without doing violence to any propriety at all.
But the story