‘Nothing without it!’

They had each a dissolving grain of contempt for women compelled by their delicacy to spoil that kind of story which demands the piquant accompaniment to flavour it racily and make it passable.  For to see insipid mildness complacently swallowed as an excellent thing, knowing the rich smack of savour proper to the story, is your anecdotal gentleman’s annoyance.  But if the anecdote had supported him, Sullivan Smith would have let the expletive rest.

Major Carew Mahoney capped Mrs. Warwick’s tale of the unfortunate duellist with another, that confessed the practice absurd, though he approved of it; and he cited Lord Larrian’s opinion:  ’It keeps men braced to civil conduct.’

’I would not differ with the dear old lord; but no! the pistol is the sceptre of the bully,’ said Diana.

Mr. Hepburn, with the widest of eyes on her in perpetuity, warmly agreed; and the man was notorious among men for his contrary action.

’Most righteously our Princess Egeria distinguishes her reign by prohibiting it,’ said Lady Singleby.

‘And how,’ Sullivan Smith sighed heavily, ’how, I’d ask, are ladies to be protected from the bully?’

He was beset:  ’So it was all for us? all in consideration for our benefit?’

He mournfully exclaimed:  ‘Why, surely!’

’That is the funeral apology of the Rod, at the close of every barbarous chapter,’ said Diana.

’Too fine in mind, too fat in body; that is a consequence with men, dear madam.  The conqueror stands to his weapons, or he loses his possessions.’

’Mr. Sullivan Smith jumps at his pleasure from the special to the general, and will be back, if we follow him, Lady Pennon.  It is the trick men charge to women, showing that they can resemble us.’

Lady Pennon thumped her knee.  ’Not a bit.  There’s no resemblance, and they know nothing of us.’

‘Women are a blank to them, I believe,’ said Whitmonby, treacherously bowing;—­and Westlake said: 

’Traces of a singular scrawl have been observed when they were held in close proximity to the fire.’

‘Once, on the top of a coach,’ Whitmonby resumed, ’I heard a comely dame of the period when summers are ceasing threatened by her husband with a divorce, for omitting to put sandwiches in their luncheon-basket.  She made him the inscrutable answer:  “Ah, poor man! you will go down ignorant to your grave!” We laughed, and to this day I cannot tell you why.’

’That laugh was from a basket lacking provision; and I think we could trace our separation to it,’ Diana said to Lady Pennon, who replied:  ‘They expose themselves; they get no nearer to the riddle.’

Miss Courtney, a rising young actress, encouraged by a smile from Mrs. Warwick, remarked:  ‘On the stage, we have each our parts equally.’

‘And speaking parts; not personae mutae.’

‘The stage has advanced in verisimilitude,’ Henry Wilmers added slyly; and Diana rejoined:  ’You recognize a verisimilitude of the mirror when it is in advance of reality.  Flatter the sketch, Miss Paynham, for a likeness to be seen.  Probably there are still Old Conservatives who would prefer the personation of us by boys.’