“No, I mean certain kinds of bad things.”

“Such as cheating at cards?”

“No. If he were found doing that, he would be expelled from any club in London.”

“May he tell lies then?”

“Certainly not! It is a very ungentlemanly thing to tell lies.”

“Then if a man tells a lie, he is not a gentleman?”

“I do not say that. I say that to tell lies is ungentlemanly.”

“Does that mean that he may tell some lies, and yet be a gentleman?”

Lady Ann was afraid to go on. She saw that to go on answering this colonial girl with her troublesome freedom of thought and question might land her in a bog of contradictions.

“How many lies may a gentleman tell in a day?” pursued the straight-going Barbara.

“Not any,” answered lady Ann.

“Does the same rule hold for ladies?”

“Y-e-s—I should say so,” replied her ladyship with hesitation, for she suspected being slowly driven into some snare. She knew she was not careful enough to speak the truth—at least so much she confessed to herself. The fact was that, to serve any purpose she thought worth gaining, she would lie without a scruple—taking care, however, to keep the lie as much like the truth as possible so that, if she were found out, it might seem she had mistaken.

Barbara noted the uncertainty of the sound of her ladyship’s voice, and began to be assured that the laws of society were no firm stepping-stones, and that society itself was a morass, where one must spend her life in jumping from stone to stone, or be swallowed up.

As they talked, the feeling came upon Barbara and grew that she was herself not acting like a lady in going so much to her house, and being received by her as a guest, when all the time she knew something she did not know, something it was important for her to know, something she had a right and a claim to know.

“I want to talk to you about something, lady Ann,” she said. “You can’t but know that a son of sir Wilton’s was stolen when he was a baby and never found.”

It was the first time for many years that lady Ann had heard the thing alluded to. Her heart seemed to make a somersault, but not a visible muscle moved. What could the girl be hinting at? Were there reports about?

“Everyone knows that!” she answered. “It is but too true. It happened after my marriage. I was in the house at the time. What of it? There can be little hope of his turning up now—after twenty years.”

“I believe he has turned up. I believe I know him.”