"Men are not noble creatures," she continued.
"I am afraid you would not give many their patents of nobility if you had power to bestow them," I answered.
"Most men at the beginning, and very often ever after, are ignoble creatures.

Yet I should confer the patents of nobility, if it were my prerogative; for some would succeed in living up to them.

Vanity would accomplish that much.

Vanity is the secret of noblesse oblige; not radical virtue--since we are beginning to be bookish again." "To what do you reduce honour and right ?" returned I.
"As I said to you on a memorable occasion," she answered very drily, "to a code." "That is," rejoined I, "a man does a good action, lives an honourable life, to satisfy a social canon--to gratify, say, a wife or mother, who believes in him, and loves him ?" "Yes." She was watching Belle Treherne promenading with her father.

She drew my attention to it by a slight motion of the hand, but why I could not tell.
"But might not a man fall by the same rule of vanity ?" I urged.