ng tender enough, or having been kept too
long."

"My idea about the lecture," resumed the Duchess hurriedly, "is to
inquire whether promiscuous Continental travel doesn't tend to weaken the
moral fibre of the social conscience. There are people one knows, quite
nice people when they are in England, who are so _different_ when they
are anywhere the other side of the Channel."

"The people with what I call Tauchnitz morals," observed Reginald. "On
the whole, I think they get the best of two very desirable worlds. And,
after all, they charge so much for excess luggage on some of those
foreign lines that it's really an economy to leave one's reputation
behind one occasionally."

"A scandal, my dear Reginald, is as much to be avoided at Monaco or any
of those places as at Exeter, let us say."

"Scandal, my dear Irene--I may call you Irene, mayn't I?"

"I don't know that you have known me long enough for that."

"I've known you longer than your god-parents had when they took the
liberty of calling you that name. Scandal is merely the compassionate
allowance which the gay make to the humdrum. Think how many blameless
lives are brightened by the blazing indiscretions of other people. Tell
me, who is the woman with the old lace at the table on our left? Oh,
_that_ doesn't matter; it's quite the thing nowadays to stare at people
as if they were yearlings at Tattersall's."

"Mrs. Spelvexit? Quite a charming woman; separated from her husband"--

"Incompatibility of income?"

"Oh, nothing of that sort. By miles of frozen ocean, I was going to say.
He explores ice-floes and studies the movements of herrings, and has
written a most interesting book on the home-life of the Esquimaux; but
naturally he has very little home-life of his own."

"A husband who comes home with the Gulf Stream _would_ be rather a tied-
up asset."

"His wife is exceedingly sensible about it. She collects postage-stamps.
Such a resource. Those people with her are the Whimples, very old
acquaintances of mine; they're always having trouble, poor things."

"Trouble is not one of those fancies you can take up and drop at any
moment; it's like a grouse-moor or the opium-habit--once you start it
you've got to keep it up."

"Their eldest son was such a disappointment to them; they wanted him to
be a linguist, and spent no end of money on having him taught to
speak--oh, dozens of languages!--and then he became a Trappist monk. And
the younge