the bishop s and yet really they hardly see any other young men i think it is a very difficult position that of a bishop s wife lord smiled settling himself back in the comer of the wide sofa and crossing his long legs he had thought more deeply on a good many subjects than the majority of his acquaintance supposed with the consequence that he occasionally surprised his fellow by the of his observations in debate lord it may be added took his recently acquired office of hereditary with a mixture of humour and seriousness their position is an one he said and an position is inevitably a difficult one � ought to be so in my opinion but that s not to the point we were talking not about the ladies but about this little business of s so you believe lady has views and intentions i know that she has but you see lady went on returning to the name which that gentleman had rendered somewhat notorious in earlier years by a record in sport in debts in and in irresistible sweetness of temper � i want to be quite sure he is really good because the affair has not gone very far yet and it might be put a stop to � at least i hope and think it might � without making darling too dreadfully unhappy you do believe he really is good lord leaned forward and rubbed a hardly perceptible of off his left leg just above the ankle my dear con he answered you are very charming but you are a trifle embarrassing too you know the far horizon haven t you learned even at this time of day that very few men in our world are good in a good woman s sense of the word lady s smooth forehead into fine little lines dear she said you re not getting i hope me bless you no never in life he returned smiling very at her don t worry yourself under that head i quarrel with nobody and nothing not even the consequences of my past it is a very just world take it all and has been kinder to me than i deserve oh but you do nothing you � you are what � you won t think me rude � what the boys call very decent now lady spoke hurriedly her colour rising in the most engaging manner as decent as i know how you dear soul he said taking her hand in his but that makes no difference to one s knowledge of one s own ways in the past or of the ways of other men but barking neither better nor worse than the rest then lord shut his small and beautiful mouth very tight as though he would be glad to avoid further cross questioning lady s forehead remained it s dreadfully difficult when one s girls grow up she said one can be comfortable about them poor and enjoy them when they are in the nursery � even in the though are worrying they know so much about quantities of subjects which seem to me not to matter one never to them in ordinary and if one should the far horizon be to it is so easy to ask somebody to tell one and yet they manage to make me fed dreadfully uncomfortable and ignorant because i know nothing about them but when they grow � who the lord inquired i never supposed they stood in need of that process � thought they started out of the egg all finished as you might say and ran about at once like chickens no no the girls poor lady replied one does get dreadfully anxious about them really one does � specially if one has escaped something very and has been very happy � lest they should fall in love with the wrong people or lest they should be anything which one did not know beforehand and then everything should turn out dreadful i should be so miserable i don t think i could bear it i know it is wrong to say that because if one was really good one would accept whatever god sent without murmuring so i could for myself i think in any case i should earnestly try to but for the children it is so much harder if they were unhappy i should feel ashamed of having had them � as if i d done something horribly selfish because you see there can be nothing so delightful as having children she looked at lord in the most pathetic manner the comers of her mouth a shake and he took her hand and held it again touched by the sincerity of her confused utterance and the great mother love resident in her touched perhaps by the age old problem of man and maid also dear little con dear little con he said i m awfully sorry you should be worried but i m afraid we ve got to look facts in the face and it s no kindness for me to lie to you about these matters i don t pretend to say what s right or what s wrong x only say what it is we the far horizon can t make society and the ways of it all over again even to save a i don t want to seem a brute but she must just take her chance along with the rest of you marriage always has been a confounded uncertain business and will always remain so i suppose the sort of excited persons suggest to the dangers of it are a good deal worse than the disease in my opinion every woman has to take her chance every man has to take his too you know � and the chance strikes some of us as such an uncommonly poor one that upon my honour it seems safest to wash one 