"A vulgar man!" observed Lady Sarah with an acid finality.
Here, somewhat to my surprise, Fillingford opposed. He was a dry man, but a just one, and not even against an enemy should more than truth be said.
"No, I don't think he's that. His incivility is aggressive, even rough sometimes, but I shouldn't call it vulgar. I don't know what you think, Mr. Mayor, but it seems to me that vulgarity can hardly exist without either affectation in the man himself or cringing to others. Now Octon isn't affected and he never cringes."
Bindlecombe was a sensible man, and himself—if Fillingford's definition stood—not vulgar.
"You know better than I do, Lord Fillingford," he said. "But I should call him a gentleman spoiled—and perhaps that's a bit different."
"Meant for a gentleman, perhaps?" suggested Lady Aspenick, a pretty thin woman of five-and-thirty, who looked studious and wore double glasses, yet was a mighty horsewoman and whip withal.
I liked her suggestion. "Really, I believe that's about it," I made bold to remark. "He is meant for a gentleman, but he's rather perverse about it."
Lady Sarah looked at me with just an involuntary touch of surprise. I do not think that, in the bottom of her heart, she expected me to speak—unless, of course, spoken to.
"I intensely dislike both his manners and his opinions—and what I hear of his character," she observed.
"I mean," Lady Aspenick pursued, "that he's been to so many queer places, and must have seen such queer things——"