impression you deserve
whatever you may get." The penalty Mitchy had incurred was apparently
grave enough to make his companion just falter in the infliction of it;
which gave him the opportunity of replying that the little person
was perhaps not more preposterous than any one else, that there was
something in her he rather liked, and that there were many different
ways in which a woman could be interesting. This further levity it was
therefore that laid him fully open. "Do you mean to say you've
been living with Petherton so long without becoming aware that he's
shockingly worried?"

"My dear Duchess," Mitchy smiled, "Petherton carries his worries with a
bravery! They're so many that I've long since ceased to count them; and
in general I've been disposed to let those pass that I can't help him to
meet. YOU'VE made, I judge," he went on, "a better use of opportunities
perhaps not so good--such as at any rate enables you to see further than
I into the meaning of the impatience he just now expressed."

The Duchess was admirable, in conversation, for neglecting everything
not essential to her present plausibility. "A woman like Lady Fanny can
have no 'grounds' for anything--for any indignation, I mean, or for any
revenge worth twopence. In this particular case at all events they've
been sacrificed with such extravagance that, as an injured wife, she
hasn't had the gumption to keep back an inch or two to stand on. She can
do absolutely nothing."

"Then you take the view--?" Mitchy, who had, after all, his delicacies,
pulled up as at sight of a name.

"I take the view," said the Duchess, "and I know exactly why. Elle se
les passe--her little fancies! She's a phenomenon, poor dear. And all
with--what shall I call it?--the absence of haunting remorse of a good
house-mother who makes the family accounts balance. She looks--and it's
what they love her for here when they say 'Watch her now!'--like an
angry saint; but she's neither a saint nor, to be perfectly fair to her,
really angry at all. She has only just enough reflexion to make out that
it may some day be a little better for her that her husband shall, on
his side too, have committed himself; and she's only, in secret, too
pleased to be sure whom it has been with. All the same I must tell you,"
the Duchess still more crisply added, "that our little friend Nanda is
of the opinion--which I gather her to be quite ready to defend--that
Lady Fanny's wrong."

Poor Mitchy