"To see his father, I presume. Sir George, I believe, cabled him to come."
"The Earl is no worse than he has been or may be for some time to come. I hope, for his own sake, and for our sake Hal has no intention of staying, because you know he is quite impossible here, now isn't he?"
"I suppose so," said Lady Winifred with a note of regret, for she was fond of the boy, "and yet we pride ourselves here on being cosmopolitan, on havin' no race prejudices."
"Officially? No! Socially? Most assuredly yes! Officially we treat these Indian potentates as princes. Actually, my dear, we regard them as niggers. Well, there you are."
"Yes," she admitted. "We are fairly tolerant of aliens because there are not enough of them to annoy us. They don't crowd us off the pavement, or take our places in the tram, or lay hands on the stipends and positions we reserve for ourselves, but, as a matter of fact, we are quite the most intolerant people in the world. Still it isn't his being a half-breed that matters so much, I think. He was living that down—it's his having to leave the Army."
"Quite so; but why did he have to leave the Army? Because he didn't know how to obey; because he couldn't submit to discipline, and why couldn't he submit to discipline? Because he had in his veins the blood of the American Indian. It comes down to race at last."
"But why shouldn't a half-breed inherit the best of each type instead of the worst and so be superior to either?"
"Oh, there is only one best, my dear," said Gordon as he walked to the coffee with a superior smile. "There is only one best."
"And of course we assume that we are the superior type."
Lady Winifred looked after Sir Gordon with toleration. She was a woman of unusual intelligence and it was hardly fair to ask her to maintain any real illusions as to her husband.