“I don’t believe in it:  Dolores is in love with Physiology, and the boy with what Jasper calls Socialist maggots, but not with each other, unless they work round in some queer fashion.”

However, Lady Merrifield, feeling herself accountable for Dolores, was anxious to gather ideas about Gerald from his aunt, with whom she was becoming more and more intimate.  She was more than twenty years the senior, and the thread of connection was very slender, but they suited one another so well that they had become Lilias and Geraldine to one another.  Lady Merrifield had preserved her youthfulness chiefly from having had a happy home, unbroken by family sorrows or carking cares, and with a husband who had always taken his full share of responsibility.

“Your nephew’s production has made a stir,” said she, when they found themselves alone together.

“Yes, poor boy.”  Then answering the tone rather than the words, “I suppose it is the lot of one generation to be startled by the next.  There is a good deal of change in the outlook.”

“Yes,” said Lady Merrifield.  “The young ones, especially the youngest, seem to have a set of notions of their own that I cannot always follow.”

“Exactly,” said Geraldine eagerly.

“You feel the same?  To begin with, the laws of young ladyhood-— maidenliness-—are a good deal relaxed-—”

“There I am not much of a judge.  I never had any young ladyhood, but I own that the few times I went out with Anna I have been surprised, and more surprised at what I heard from her sister Emily.”

“What we should have thought simply shocking being tolerated now.”

“Just so; and we are viewed as old duennas for not liking it.  I should say, however, that it is not, or has not, been a personal trouble with me.  Anna’s passion is for her Uncle Clement, and she has given up the season on his account, though Lady Travis Underwood was most anxious to have her; and as to Emily, though she is obliged to go out sometimes, she hates it, and has a soul set on slums and nursing.”

“You mean that the style of gaieties revolts a nice-minded girl?”

“Partly.  Perhaps such as the Travis Underwoods used to take part in, rather against their own likings, poor things, are much less restrained for the young people than what would come in your daughters’ way.”

“Perhaps; though Lady Rotherwood has once or twice in country-houses had to protect her daughter, to the great disgust of the other young people.  That is one development that it is hard to meet, for it is difficult to know where old-fashioned distaste is the motive, and where the real principle of modesty.  Though to me the question is made easy, for Sir Jasper would never hear of cricket for his daughters, scarcely of hunting, and we have taken away Valetta and Primrose from the dancing-classes since skirt-dancing has come in; but I fear Val thinks it hard.”