'You mean the way she crosses her legs?'
'Yes.'
'But that, too—it seems like so many other things, a question only of degree. Nobody objects to seeing a pair of neat ankles crossed—it looks rather nice and early Victorian. Nowadays lots of girls cross their knees—and nobody says anything. But Sophia crosses her—well, her thighs.'
And the two women laughed understandingly.
A stranger might imagine that the reason for Lady Sophia's presence in the party was that she, by common consent, played a capital game of golf—'for a woman.' That fact, however, was rather against her. For people who can play the beguiling game, want to play it—and want to play it not merely now and then out of public spirit to make up a foursome, but constantly and for pure selfish love of it. Woman may, if she likes, take it as a compliment to her sex that this proclivity—held to be wholly natural in a man—is called 'rather unfeminine' in a woman. But it was a defect like the rest, forgiven the Lady Sophia for her father's sake. Lord Borrodaile, held to be one of the most delightful of men, was much in request for parties of this description. One reason for his daughter's being there was that it glossed the fact that Lady Borrodaile was not—was, indeed, seldom present, and one may say never missed, in the houses frequented by her husband.
But as he and his friends not only did not belong to, but looked down upon, the ultra smart set, where the larger freedoms are practised in lieu of the lesser decencies, Lord Borrodaile lived his life as far removed from any touch of scandal and irregularity as the most puritanic of the bourgeoisie. Part and parcel of his fastidiousness, some said—others, that from his Eton days he had always been a lazy beggar. As though to show that he did not shrink from reasonable responsibility towards his female impedimenta, any inquiry as to the absence of Lady Borrodaile was met by reference to Sophia. In short, where other attractive husbands brought a boring wife, Lord Borrodaile brought an undecorative daughter. While to the onlooker nearly every aspect of this particular young woman would seem destined to offend a beauty-loving, critical taste like that of Borrodaile, he was probably served, as other mortals are, by that philosophy of the senses which brings in time a deafness and a blindness to the unloveliness that we needs must live beside. Lord Borrodaile was far too intelligent not to see, too, that when people had got over Lady Sophia's uncompromising exterior, they found things in her to admire as well as to stand a little in awe of. Unlike one another as the Borrodailes were, in one respect they presented to the world an undivided front. From their point of view, just as laws existed to keep other people in order, so was 'fashion' an affair for the middle classes. The Borrodailes might dress as dowdily as they pleased, might speak as uncompromisingly as they felt inclined. Were they not Borrodailes of Borrodaile? Though open expression of this spirit grows less common, they would not have denied that it is still the prevailing temper of the older aristocracy. And so it has hitherto been true that among its women you find that sort of freedom which is the prerogative of those called the highest and of those called the lowest. It is the women of all the grades between these two extremes who have dared not to be themselves, who ape the manners, echo the catchwords, and garb themselves in the elaborate ugliness, devised for the blind meek millions.
As the Lady Sophia, now a little in advance of her companions, came stalking towards the steps, out from a little path that wound among the thick-growing laurels issued Paul Filey. He raised his eyes, and hurriedly thrust a small book into his pocket. The young lady paused, but only apparently to pat, or rather to administer an approving cuff to, the Bedlington terrier lying near the lower step.
'Well,' she said over her shoulder to Filey, 'our side gave a good account of itself that last round.'
'I was sure it would as soon as my malign influence was removed.'
'Yes; from the moment I took on Dick Farnborough, the situation assumed a new aspect. You'll never play a good game, you know, if you go quoting Baudelaire on the links.'