"I'm sure I'm not surprised," says Tom Hescott.
He takes a step closer to Tita, as if to protect her. It seems hideous to him that she should have to discuss—that she should even have known him.
"Well, neither am I," says Mrs. Chichester. "He _is _horrid, and as ugly as the——" She had the grace to stop here, and change her sentence. "As ugly can be."
It is a lame conclusion, but she is consoled for it by the fact that some of her audience understand what the natural end of that sentence would have been.
"And what manners!" says she. "After all," with a pretty little shake of her head, "what can you expect of a man with hair as red as a carrot?"
"Decency, at all events," says Tom Hescott coldly.
"Oh! That—last of all," says Mrs. Chichester.
"Lady Warbeck is a very charming old lady," says Margaret Knollys, breaking into the conversation with a view to changing it.
"Yes," says Mrs. Chichester. She laughs mischievously. "And such a delightful contrast to her son! She is so good."
"She's funny, isn't she?" says Tita, throwing back her lovely little head, and laughing as if at some late remembrance.