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LADY HUNSTANTON. Oh, I hope not, dear. I knew his mother quite
well. She was a Stratton, Caroline, one of Lord Crowland's
daughters

LADY CAROLINE. Victoria Stratton? I remember her perfectly. A
silly fair-haired woman with no chin.

MRS. ALLONBY. Ah, Ernest has a chin. He has a very strong chin, a
square chin. Ernest's chin is far too square.

LADY STUTFIELD. But do you really think a man's chin can be too
square? I think a man should look very, very strong, and that his
chin should be quite, quite square.

MRS. ALLONBY. Then you should certainly know Ernest, Lady
Stutfield. It is only fair to tell you beforehand he has got no
conversation at all.

LADY STUTFIELD. I adore silent men.

MRS. ALLONBY. Oh, Ernest isn't silent. He talks the whole time.
But he has got no conversation. What he talks about I don't know.
I haven't listened to him for years.

LADY STUTFIELD. Have you never forgiven him then? How sad that
seems! But all life is very, very sad, is it not?

MRS. ALLONBY. Life, Lady Stutfield, is simply a MAUVAIS QUART
D'HEURE made up of exquisite moments.

LADY STUTFIELD. Yes, there are moments, certainly. But was it
something very, very wrong that Mr. Allonby did? Did he become
angry with you, and say anything that was unkind or true?

MRS. ALLONBY. Oh dear, no. Ernest is invariably calm. That is
one of the reasons he always gets on my nerves. Nothing is so
aggravating as calmness. There is something positively brutal
about the good temper of most modern men. I wonder we women stand
it as well as we do.

LADY STUTFIELD. Yes; men's good temper shows they are not so
sensitive as we are, not so finely strung. It makes a great
barrier often between husband and wife, does it not? But I would
so much like to know what was the wrong thing Mr. Allonby did.

MRS. ALLONBY. Well, I will tell you, if you solemnly promise to
tell everybody else.

LADY STUTFIELD. Thank you, thank you. I will make a point of
repeating it.

MRS. ALLONBY. When Ernest and I were engaged, he swore to me
positively on his knees that he had never loved any one before in
the whole course of his life. I was very young at the time, so I
didn't believe him, I needn't tell you. Unfortunately, however, I
made no enquiries of any kind till after I had been actually
married four or five months. I found out then that what he had
told me was perfectly true. And that sort of thing makes a man so
absolutely uninteresting.

LADY HUNSTANTON. My dear!

MRS. ALLONBY. Men always want to be a woman's first love. That is
their clumsy vanity. We women have a more subtle instinct about
things. What we like is to be a man's last romance.

LADY STUTFIELD. I see what you mean. It's very, very beautiful.

LADY HUNSTANTON. My dear child, you don't mean to tell me that you
won't forgive your husband because he never loved any one else?

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