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Rh all much better than we seem. There is far more hypocrisy of vice nowadays than hypocrisy of virtue. The amount of excellence going about is positively quite amazing, if one only knows where to look for it; but good people in Society are so terribly afraid of being found out."

"Really! Can that be the case?"

"Indeed, it can. Society is absolutely frank about its sins, but absolutely secretive about its lapses into goodness, if I may so phrase it. I once knew a young nobleman who went twice to church on Sunday—in the morning and the afternoon. He managed to conceal it for nearly five years, but one day, to his horror, he saw a paragraph in the Star—the Star is a small evening paper which circulates chiefly among members of the Conservative party who desire to know what the aristocracy are doing—revealing his exquisite secret. He fled the country immediately, and is now living in retirement in Buenos Ayres, which is, I am told, the modern equivalent of the old-fashioned purgatory."

"Good gracious! London must be in a very sad condition," said Mr. Smith, in considerable excitement. "No, thank you, I never touch fruit. Things used to be very different, I imagine, although I have never been in town