What ought we to do, Lord Arranmore ?" "Sit in sackcloth and ashes, and hear Brooks lecture on the poor," he answered, lightly.

"Brooks is a mixture of the sentimentalist and the hideous pessimist, you know, and it is the privilege of his years to be sometimes in earnest.

I know nothing more depressing than to listen to a man who is in earnest." "You are getting positively light-headed," Sybil laughed.

"I can see no pleasure in life save that which comes from an earnest pursuit of things, good or evil." "My dear child," Lord Arranmore answered, "when you are a little older you will know that to take life seriously is a sheer impossibility.

You may think that you are doing it, but you are not." "There must be exceptions," Sybil declared.
"There are none," Lord Arranmore answered, lightly, "outside the madhouse.