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190 thunderstorm was necessary for it. It was advisedly that she spoke again.

"I think you will see that you do mean that when you come to express yourself," she said. "You don't like the tone of omen tor tainmente, for which I am certainly responsible, and I don't think that you entirely like the tone of my friends. Is that not so also?"

"Many of them I like immensely," he said.

"Lot us revise the visiting-list, then," she said. "My dear, do come to the point at once, instead of beating about the bush. Who is it?"

"It is Lady Heron," he said.

"So I supposed. Now, as you know, I have not been very long in London, but I see her received everywhere; and as I am particularly fond of her, I see no reason why I should not be intimate with her."

"People talk about her," said Edgar. "Abominable things are said about her."

"Ah, there is the difference between us," said Lucia. "You listen to gossip, I don't. But since you have done so, please tell me what things are said about her. I mean, by the way, to tell her all you tell me. She is my friend; I think she ought to know."

That sounded gloriously unworldly, and it had the effect of making Edgar's heart go out to his wife in a sudden rush of essential admiration. But it was even more gloriously worldly; it was a piece of supreme wisdom. For the moment she completely disarmed him.

"Ah, Lucia, you are such a child," he said. "You are unspotted; it was loyalty itself that spoke there. But you can't go through this rough-and-tumble of a world on those lines. People are brutes; they say that to touch pitch is to be defiled. It isn't so, of course, with you"

But she interrupted him again.

"Oh, let us be frank," she said. "The pitch—you allude Madge in that way. What do you mean? Let us have it out. I wish to tell Madge what people say about her. Of course, I shall not say who told me."

He was silent: simply he could not tell her.

"Cannot you take my word for it," he said, "that it would be wiser of you not to see quite so much of Lady Heron? It is true she has a great position, but people, nice people"