"And you are a very interesting young lady."
"You ought to think me so, for I interest myself very much about you. Was the Duke very angry about your not standing for the county?"
"He was vexed."
"I do think it is so odd that a man should be expected to be this or that in politics because his father happened to be so before him! I don't understand how he should expect that you should remain with a party so utterly snobbish and down in the world as the Radicals. Everybody that is worth anything is leaving them."
"He has not left them."
"No, I don't suppose he could; but you have."
"I never belonged to them, Lady Mab."
"And never will, I hope. I always told papa that you would certainly be one of us." All this took place in the drawing-room of Lord Grex's house. There was no Lady Grex alive, but there lived with the Earl a certain elderly lady, reported to be in some distant way a cousin of the family, named Miss Cassewary, who, in the matter of looking after Lady Mab, did what was supposed to be absolutely necessary. She now entered the room with her bonnet on, having just returned from church. "What was the text?" asked Lady Mab at once.
"If you had gone to church, as you ought to have done, my dear, you would have heard it."
"But as I didn't?"