‘Very hot,’ he said to Lady Mary.

‘We found it warm in church today.’

’I dare say.  I came down here with your brother in his hansom cab.  What a very odd thing to have a hansom cab!’

‘I should like one.’

‘Should you indeed?’

’Particularly if I could drive it myself.  Silverbridge does, at night, when he thinks people won’t see him.’

‘Drive the cab in the streets!  What does he do with his man?’

’Puts him inside.  He was out once without the man and took up a fare,—­an old woman, he said.  And when she was going to pay him he touched his hat and said he never took money from ladies.’

‘Do you believe that?’

’Oh yes.  I call that good fun, because it did no harm.  He had his lark.  The lady was taken where she wanted to go, and she saved her money.’

‘Suppose he had upset her,’ said Lord Popplecourt, looking as an old philosopher might have looked when he had found something clenching answer to another philosopher’s argument.

‘The real cabman might have upset her worse,’ said Lady Mary.

‘Don’t you feel it odd that we should meet here?’ said Lord Silverbridge to his neighbour Lady Mabel.

‘Anything unexpected is odd,’ said Lady Mabel.  It seemed to her to be very odd,—­unless certain people had made up their minds as to the expediency of a certain event.

’That is what you call logic;—­isn’t it?  Anything unexpected is odd?’

’Lord Silverbridge, I won’t be laughed at.  You have been at Oxford and ought to know what logic is.’

‘That at any rate is ill-natured,’ he replied, turning very red in the face.

’You don’t think I meant it.  Oh, Lord Silverbridge, say that you don’t think I meant it.  You cannot think I would willingly wound you.  Indeed, indeed, I was not thinking.’  It had, in truth been an accident.  She could speak aloud because they were closely surrounded by others, but she looked up in his face to see whether he were angry with her.  ‘Say that you do not think I meant it.’

‘I do not think you meant it.’

’I would not say a word to hurt you,—­oh for more than I can tell you.’

‘It is all bosh of course,’ said he laughing, ’but I do not like to hear the old place named.  I have always made a fool of myself, some men do it and don’t care about it.  But I do it, and yet it makes me miserable.’

’If that be so you will soon give over making—­what you call a fool of yourself, for my self I like the idea of wild oats.  I look upon them like measles.  Only you should have a doctor ready when the disease shows itself.’

‘What sort of doctor should I have?’

’Ah;—­you must find that out for yourself.  That sort of feeling which makes you feel miserable;—­that is a doctor itself.’

‘Or a wife?’

’Or a wife,—­if you can find a good one.  There are wives, you know, who aggravate the disease.  If I had a fast husband I should make him faster by being fast myself.  There is nothing I envy so much as the power of doing half-mad things.’