Lord Stonebridge amended this remark. "Except when you accepted him."
"Certainly not; because, as a matter of fact, I refused him; but he never listened, and so he married me. It is so restful to have a husband who never attends to what you say! It must be dreadfully wearing to have one who does, because then you'd never be able to tell him the truth. And the great charm of your having a home of your own appears to be that it is the one place where you can speak the truth."
Lord Bobby clapped his hands. "Whatever lies disturb the street, there must be truth at home," he ejaculated.
"Wiser not, even there," murmured Sir Wilfred Madderley, under his breath.
"But you have all interrupted me, and haven't listened to what I was telling you about my intelligent man; and if you eat my food you must listen to my stones—it's only fair."
"But if even your own husband doesn't think it necessary to listen to them," Lord Bobby objected, "why should we, who have never desired to be anything more than sisters to you?"
"Because he doesn't eat my food—I eat his; that makes all the difference, don't you see?"
"Then do you listen to his stories?"
"To every one of them every time they are told; and I know to an inch the exact place where to laugh. But I'm going on about my man. He was one of those instructive boring people, who will tell you the reason of things; and he explained to me that soldiers wear khaki and polar bears white, because if you are dressed in the same colour as the place where you are, it looks as if you weren't there. And it has since occurred to me that I should be a much wiser and happier woman if I always dressed myself in the same colour as my drawing-room furniture. Then nobody would be able to find me even in my own house. Don't you think it is rather a neat idea?" And her ladyship looked round for the applause which she had learned to expect as her right.
"You are a marvellous woman!" cried Lord Stonebridge, while the others murmured their approval.