world, as you call it, it is not always right to give the
real reason for what we do; and therefore I thought, perhaps, that
though of course you wished me to come away, you liked to put it upon my
being ill."

"Of course I wished you to come away! I was never more unwilling to move
in all my life; and nothing but consideration for your health would have
induced me to stir. Why should I have wished you to come away?"

"Why, the naked woman," stammered Lucy.

"What can you mean?"

"You couldn't surely wish me to sit by the side of those people, to see
such a thing as that?"

"As to being by the side of those people, I must remind you, that it was
Lady Gayland's box in which you were; and that whatever she, with her
acknowledged taste and refinement, sanctions with her presence, can only
be objected to by ignorance or prejudice. You have still a great deal to
learn, my dear Lucy," added he, more kindly; "and nothing can be so
fatal to your progress in that respect, as your attempting to lead, or
to find fault, with what you do not understand."

"But surely I can understand that it is not right to do what I saw that
woman do," interrupted Lucy, presuming a little more doggedly than she
usually ventured to do on any subject with her husband; for this time
she had been really shocked by what she had seen.

"Wrong it certainly is not, if you mean moral wrong. As to such an
exhibition being becoming or not in point of manners, that depends
entirely upon custom. Many things at your father's might strike me as
coarseness, which made no impression upon you from habit, though much
worse in my opinion than this presumed indecorum. Those things probably
arose from ignorance on your parts, which might be corrected. This, on
the other hand, from conventional indifference, consequent on custom,
which it is not in you to correct. Depend upon it you will only get
yourself laughed at, and me too, if you preach about dancers'
petticoats."

"I don't want to preach to any body; and you know how much it fashes me
to contend with you."

"Don't say FASHES, say distresses, or annoys, not _fashes_, for heaven's
sake, my dear Lucy."

"Oh, dear, it was very stupid of me to forget it. That was one of the
first things you taught me, and it is a many days since I said it last;
but it is so strange to me to venture to differ with you, that I get
confused, and don't say any thing as right as I could do. Even now I
should like to ask, if mo