"Oh, that!" The Countess uncrossed her legs, took her cigarette holder from her mouth and began to talk rapidly.
"I will tell you some horrors," she said. "Horrors that I have seen. Incredible! You would not believe!"
And she was as good as her word. She talked fluently and with a graphic power of description. Incredible scenes of starvation and misery were painted by her for the benefit of her audience. She spoke of Buda Pesth shortly after the war and traced its vicissitudes to the present day. She was dramatic, but she was also, to Bundle's mind, a little like a gramophone record. You turned her on, and there you were. Presently, just as suddenly, she would stop.
Lady Coote was thrilled to the marrow—that much was clear. She sat with her mouth slightly open and her large, sad, dark eyes fixed on the Countess. Occasionally, she interpolated a comment of her own.
"One of my cousins had three children burned to death. Awful, wasn't it?"
The Countess paid no attention. She went on and on. And she finally stopped as suddenly as she had begun.
"There!" she said. "I have told you! We have money—but no organization. It is organization we need."
Lady Coote sighed.
"I've heard my husband say that nothing can be done without regular methods. He attributes his own success entirely to that. He declares he would have never got on without them."
She sighed again. A sudden fleeting vision passed before her eyes of a Sir Oswald who had not got on in the world. A Sir Oswald who retained, in all essentials, the attributes of that cheery young man in the bicycle shop. Just for a second it occurred to her how much pleasanter life might have been for her if Sir Oswald had not had regular methods.