Perhaps there were children aged seventeen long ago--one reads of them, I admit, but it is too long ago for one to remember.

Why, I was only eighteen when I married your uncle." "Pour uncle!" says Mrs.Bethune; her tone is full of feeling.
Lady Rylton accepts the feeling as grief for the uncle's death; but Margaret, casting a swift glance at Mrs.Bethune, wonders if it was meant for grief for the uncle's life--_with_ Lady Rylton.
"He was the ugliest man I ever saw, without exception," says Lady Rylton placidly; "and I was never for a moment blind to the fact, but he was well off at that time, and, of course, I married him.

I wasn't in love with him." She pauses, and makes a little apologetic gesture with her fan and shoulders.

"Horrid expression, isn't it ?" says she.

"In love! So terribly _bourgeois_.