"'No man is an impossible husband if he is a Duke.'"
"It seems very cruel," piped Mrs. Delemar.
"Not at all!" Lady Garribardine flashed while her voice vibrated with scorn. "We are at war now with the Radical masses and cannot afford to jeopardise positions—either keep up prestige, or throw up the game and let the whole thing go by the board, but while we pretend there is still an aristocracy in England we, the members of it, should defend it. Dulcie Dashington and her ways and her photographs in the papers, and her vulgarity, and the flaunting of her unsavoury domestic affairs, are a byword and as long as I have a voice in society, and can lay some claim to power, I shall let it be known what my opinion is, and why I will not receive her. To me there is no sin like betraying an order."
"I suppose you are quite right," Mrs. Delemar now agreed meekly, "but there are such lots of odd people in society who do unheard-of things; it is these boys marrying these wretched actresses or Americans which has changed everything."
"Not at all!" contradicted her ladyship. "Boys have always married actresses from time to time, and some of them have proved very decent creatures, and if they do err, what does it matter? No one expects better from them, they are making no real breach in the wall.—And as for Americans, they are often very pretty and so clever that they seldom disgrace their new station; they are like converts to Rome, more zealous than the born papists. The only evil which can lie at their door is that they have too much money, and have given false values to entertaining, and perhaps have encouraged eccentric amusements.—No, my dear child, it is the English-women themselves who have lost self-respect, and have lowered the flag, and when one of really high birth does it, like Dulcie Dashington, she should be made to pay the price."
This was unanswerable, Katherine Bush thought as she listened, and she wondered why the other two should chaff lightly, as though it were just one of Lady Garribardine's notions. That is what generally astonished her a good deal; no one appeared to have any convictions or enthusiasm, they seemed to her to be a company of drifters, so little energy appeared to be shown by any of them. They were unpunctual and unpractical, but they were amusing and deliciously happy-go-lucky. If they had any real feelings none appeared upon the surface; even Lady Beatrice and her coterie of highly evolved poetesses and other artistic worldings, flew from theme to theme, turning intent faces upon new fads each week.
Most people's manners were casual, and their attitudes, too, would often have shocked Mabel Cawber, so far were they from being genteel. The few who truly fulfilled Katherine Bush's ideas of the meaning of the word "lady" stood out like stars. But with all these flaws, as a collection of people, there was that ease of manner, that total absence of self-consciousness, about them which never could be known at Bindon's Green.
"I suppose times are changed," Katherine told herself, "and the laxity is producing a new type—I do wonder how they would all behave if some cataclysm happened again, like the French Revolution. But when my day comes I mean to uphold the order which I shall join, as Her Ladyship does."
At the last moment, Lady Beatrice did not go as Ganymede to the Artist Models' ball. The history of her alteration of character was a rather bitterly humorous story for Gerard Strobridge's ears. She had been trying on the dress when a note had arrived with a parcel for her from her husband's aunt, which contained a very beautiful Greek mantle with these few words: