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"The fundamental principle of the new age," said the doctor,
will be Honi soit qui mal y pense. In these matters. With
perhaps Fay ce que vouldras as its next injunction. So long
as other lives are not affected. In matters of personal
behaviour the world will probably be much more free and
individuals much more open in their conscience and honour
than they have ever been before. In matters of property,
economics and public conduct it will probably be just the
reverse. Then, there will be much more collective control and
much more insistence, legal insistence, upon individual
responsibility. But we are not living in a new age yet; we
are living in the patched-up ruins of a very old one. And
you-- if you will forgive me--are living in the patched up
remains of a life that had already had its complications.
This young lady, whose charm and cleverness I admit, behaves
as if the new age were already here. Well, that may be a very
dangerous mistake both for her and for you. . . . This
affair, if it goes on for a few days more, may involve very
serious consequences indeed, with which I, for one, do not
wish to be involved."
Sir Richmond, upon the hearthrug, had a curious feeling that
he was back in the head master's study at Caxton.
Dr. Martineau went on with a lucidity that Sir Richmond found
rather trying, to give his impression of Miss Grammont and
her position in life.
"She is," he said, "manifestly a very expensively educated
girl. And in many ways interesting. I have been watching her.
I have not been favoured with very much of her attention, but
that fact has enabled me to see her in profile. Miss Seyffert
is a fairly crude mixture of frankness, insincerity and self-explanatory
egotism, and I have been able to disregard a
considerable amount of the conversation she has addressed to
me. Now I guess this Miss Grammont has had no mother since
she was quite little."
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