‘You would have her, if I follow you, divest herself of the name?’

’Pin me to no significations, if you please, O shrewdest of the legal sort!  I have wit enough to escape you there.  She is no doubt an estimable person.’

‘Well, she is; she is in her way a very good woman.’

’Ah.  You see, Mr. Carling, I cannot bring myself to rank her beside another lady, who has already claimed the title of me; and you will forgive me if I say, that your word “good” has a look of being stuck upon the features we know of her, like a coquette’s naughty patch; or it’s a jewel of an eye in an ebony idol:  though I’ve heard tell she performs her charities.’

‘I believe she gives away three parts of her income and that is large.’

‘Leaving the good lady a fine fat fourth.’

‘Compare her with other wealthy people.’

’And does she outshine the majority still with her personal attractions.

Carling was instigated by the praise he had bestowed on his wife to separate himself from a female pretender so ludicrous; he sought Fenellan’s nearest ear, emitting the sound of ‘hum.’

‘In other respects, unimpeachable!’

‘Oh! quite!’

’There was a fishfag of classic Billingsgate, who had broken her husband’s nose with a sledgehammer fist, and swore before the magistrate, that the man hadn’t a crease to complain of in her character.  We are condemned, Mr. Carling, sometimes to suffer in the flesh for the assurance we receive of the inviolability of those moral fortifications.’

’Character, yes, valuable—­I do wish you had named to-night for doing me the honour of dining with me!’ said the lawyer impulsively, in a rapture of the appetite for anecdotes.  ’I have a ripe Pichon Longueville, ‘65.’

’A fine wine.  Seductive to hear of.  I dine with my friend Victor Radnor.  And he knows wine.—­There are good women in the world, Mr. Carling, whose characters . . .’

’Of course, of course there are; and I could name you some.  We lawyers . . . . !’

‘You encounter all sorts.’

‘Between ourselves,’ Carling sank his tones to the indiscriminate, where it mingled with the roar of London.

‘You do?’ Fenellan hazarded a guess at having heard enlightened liberal opinions regarding the sex.  ‘Right!’

‘Many!’

‘I back you, Mr. Carling.’

The lawyer pushed to yet more confidential communication, up to the verge of the clearly audible:  he spoke of examples, experiences.  Fenellan backed him further.

‘Acting on behalf of clients, you understand, Mr. Fenellan.’

‘Professional, but charitable; I am with you.’

‘Poor things! we—­if we have to condemn—­we owe them something.’

’A kind word for poor Polly Venus, with all the world against her!  She doesn’t hear it often.’

‘A real service,’ Carling’s voice deepened to the legal ’without prejudice,’—­’I am bound to say it—­a service to Society.’