’For one thing, I don’t think her Horace’s equal.  She can’t really be called a lady.’

‘You are listening?’

Horace bit his lip in mortification, and again his head swung doggedly from side to side.

‘We might pass over that,’ added Mr. Lord.  ’What about her character?  Is there any good point in her?’

’I don’t think she means any harm.  But she’s silly, and I’ve often thought her selfish.’

‘You are listening?’

Horace lost patience.

‘Then why do you pretend to be friends with her?’ he demanded almost fiercely.

‘I don’t,’ replied his sister, with a note of disdain.  ’We knew each other at school, and we haven’t altogether broken off, that’s all.’

‘It isn’t all!’ shouted the young man on a high key.  ’If you’re not friendly with her and her sisters, you’ve been a great hypocrite.  It’s only just lately you have begun to think yourself too good for them.  They used to come here, and you went to them; and you talked just like friends would do.  It’s abominable to turn round like this, for the sake of taking father’s side against me!’

Mr. Lord regarded his son contemptuously.  There was a rather long silence; he spoke at length with severe deliberation.

’When you are ten years older, you’ll know a good deal more about young women as they’re turned out in these times.  You’ll have heard the talk of men who have been fools enough to marry choice specimens.  When common sense has a chance of getting in a word with you, you’ll understand what I now tell you.  Wherever you look now-a-days there’s sham and rottenness; but the most worthless creature living is one of these trashy, flashy girls,—­the kind of girl you see everywhere, high and low,—­calling themselves “ladies,”—­thinking themselves too good for any honest, womanly work.  Town and country, it’s all the same.  They’re educated; oh yes, they’re educated!  What sort of wives do they make, with their education?  What sort of mothers are they?  Before long, there’ll be no such thing as a home.  They don’t know what the word means.  They’d like to live in hotels, and trollop about the streets day and night.  There won’t be any servants much longer; you’re lucky if you find one of the old sort, who knows how to light a fire or wash a dish.  Go into the houses of men with small incomes; what do you find but filth and disorder, quarrelling and misery?  Young men are bad enough, I know that; they want to begin where their fathers left off, and if they can’t do it honestly, they’ll embezzle or forge.  But you’ll often find there’s a worthless wife at the bottom of it, —­worrying and nagging because she has a smaller house than some other woman, because she can’t get silks and furs, and wants to ride in a cab instead of an omnibus.  It is astounding to me that they don’t get their necks wrung.  Only wait a bit; we shall come to that presently!’

It was a rare thing for Stephen Lord to talk at such length.  He ceased with a bitter laugh, and sat down again in his chair.  Horace and his sister waited.