“But how dreadful!”

“Things are dreadful or not, according to the degree in which you’re used to them.  I’ve grown up in that atmosphere, and so I can endure it.  In fact, any other atmosphere seems to me to lack some of the necessary ingredients of air; just as to some people—­to Napoleon, for instance—­a woman who isn’t rouged isn’t wholly dressed.”

“I know that’s only your way of talking, dear.  Oh, you can’t shock me.”

“At any rate, the way of talking shows you what I mean.  I can quite understand how Monsieur de Bienville might have said that of Mrs. Eveleth.”

Lucilla’s look of pain induced Miss Grimston promptly to qualify her statement.

“I said I could understand it; I didn’t say I respected it.  It’s only what’s been said of hundreds of thousands of women in Paris by hundreds of thousands of men, and in the place where they’ve said it it’s taken with the traditional grain of salt.  If all had gone as it was going at the time—­if the Eveleths hadn’t lost their money—­if Mr. Eveleth hadn’t shot himself—­if Mrs. Eveleth had kept her place in French society—­the story wouldn’t have done her any harm.  People would have shrugged their shoulders at it, and forgotten it.  It’s the transferring of the scene here, among you, that makes it grave.  All your ideas are so different that what’s bad becomes worse, by being carried out of its milieu.  Monsieur de Bienville must be made to understand that, and repair the wrong.”

“You seem to think there’s no question but that—­there is a wrong?”

“Oh, I suppose there isn’t.  There are so many cases of the kind.  Mrs. Eveleth is probably neither more nor less than one of the many Frenchwomen of her rank in life who like to skate out on the thin edge of excitement without any intention of going through.  There are always women like my aunt Bayford to think the worst of people of that sort, and to say it.”

“And yet I don’t see how that justifies Monsieur de Bienville.”

“It doesn’t justify; it only explains.  Responsibility presses less heavily on the individual when it’s shared.”

“But wouldn’t the person—­you’ll forgive me, dear, won’t you, if I’m going too far?—­wouldn’t the person who has to take his part in that kind of responsibility be a doubtful keeper of one’s happiness?”

Miss Grimston, half lowering her eyes, looked at her visitor with slumberous suspension of expression, and made no reply.

“If a man isn’t good—­” Miss Lucilla began again, tremblingly.

“No man is perfect.”

“True, dear; and yet are there not certain qualities which we ought to consider as essentials—?”

“Monsieur de Bienville has those qualities for me.”

“But surely, dear, you can’t mean—?”

“Yes, I do mean.”