Be it known that "they," used simply, stood in his vocabulary for the fair sex in general.
"Nonsense," replied Fallowfield; "don't be so ungrateful. You don't know what you owe to those anxious parents. It helps you enormously, being the objects of perpetual warnings from husbands and chaperons, the first considering you _mauvais sujets_, the last _mauvais partis_; for you _are_ 'detrimentals,' for the most part, you will own."
"_Vetitum ergo cupitum_," interrupted Livingstone. "A good many moralists before and since old Rabelais have discoursed on that text. The Chief of Errington was probably much more agreeable, besides being a better match than Jock of Hazeldean, who clearly was what an old Frenchman lately described to me--'_un vaurien, mon cher, qui court les filles et qui n'a pas le son_.' But then poor Frank was the government candidate; so, of course, in a popular election, he went to the wall."
Sir Henry's face grew more pensive and grave as he said, "It is very hard on the women, certainly, that our race should have degenerated so, for I believe in my conscience they are as clever and wicked, and appreciate temptation as much as ever." (The gusto with which he said this is indescribable.) "There is the Bellasys, for instance, with a calculating sensuality, an astuteness of stratagem, an utter contempt of truth, and a general aptitude for making fools of men, that poor Philip the Regent would have worshiped. When she had no one better to corrupt, I have seen her take in hand an older, sadder, wiser, uglier man than myself, and in three days bring him to the verge of insanity, so that he would scowl at his wife, his companion for forty years, the blameless mother of six grown-up children, with a hideous expression indicative of carving-knives and strychnine. Guy suits her best. His thews and sinews awe her a little sometimes; and he has a certain hardness of character and pitilessness of purpose, improved by my instructions, which will carry him far, but not far enough, I think. You're right not to look flattered" (Guy's face had moved no more than the marble Memnon's); "you are only a shade better than the rest. Our effete world is not worthy of that rare creature: she was born a century too late."