“I don’t know where he would have got his breeding from,” said Lord Thorley. “That would have been stolen, if he had any.”
“He hadn’t: he had appropriated nothing in that line. I can’t understand you, Helen. You like seeing the weirdest sorts of people. Do you remember when you found you had asked a black bishop, a lion-tamer and a suffragette to dine with you?”
Lady Grote leaned laughing back in her chair.
“Do I remember?” she said. “And do I not remember that Grote came up to town unexpectedly that night? He arrived in the middle of dinner, gave one glance at us and fled to his club. I didn’t see him again for six months. Poor Grote!”
“Poor Grote indeed! But we are going to see him to-day, aren’t we?”
“Yes: he comes this evening. You see, Robin is coming too, and he adores Robin.”
“But tell me why you like suffragettes and lion-tamers and black bishops?” asked Lady Massingberd. “You are—it’s a terrible word—but you’re aristocratic to your finger-tips, and yet I really think you like riff-raff of that sort more than anybody. Anyhow it amuses you most. But then, of course you’ve got a sense of humour,” she added bitingly.
“Darling, I never said you hadn’t: I explained that away beautifully. But the real difference between us is that I like people: I like the human race, and you don’t like the human race. You like what they call ‘a few friends,’ which is far more genteel.”
“Oh, I’m genteel, too, am I?” asked Lady Massingberd in a voice that would have frozen molten pitch.
“Yes, you are genteel: it is very, very nice to be genteel. You like a few friends, as I said, and they are all of the class which you allowed yourself to call aristocratic. My dear, I believe that you think that when Moses came down from Sinai he brought with him not the tables of the law but the original edition of Burke’s Peerage. The Dukes of Edom: that’s what you like.”