The two men had taken off their dress coats, and had
put on smoking caps,--Lord Chiltern, indeed, having clothed himself
in a wonderful Chinese dressing-gown, and they were sitting round the
fire in the smoking-room; but though they were thus employed and thus
dressed the two younger ladies were still with them.
"How could I tell you everything in two minutes?" said Lady Chiltern.
"I'd have given a guinea to have heard her," said Lord Chiltern,
getting up and rubbing his hands as he walked about the room. "Can't
you fancy all that she'd say, and then her horror when she'd remember
that Phineas was a Papist himself?"
"But what made Miss Boreham turn nun?"
"I fancy she found the penances lighter than they were at home," said
the lord. "They couldn't well be heavier."
"Dear old aunt!"
"Does she never go to see Sister Veronica?" asked Miss Palliser.
"She has been once," said Lady Chiltern.
"And fumigated herself first so as to escape infection," said the
husband. "You should hear Gerard Maule imitate her when she talks
about the filthy priest.
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