Lady Canvey made an angry noise in her wrinkled throat. "You're impossible," she pronounced tartly. "Lionel wishes to improve you."
"What about Jim? Charity should commence with his own family."
"Well, my dear, Lionel admires you, and----"
"Oh! He is a man, then. I don't think I ever made running with a clergyman; it might be rather fun. I suppose Lionel would recite the Song of Solomon to me--there's lots of love-talk in it. Not very proper talk, either, I'm told. Perhaps Solomon wrote it for married women; he had some experience of them, hadn't he? He collected concubines, didn't he?--just like a stamp-maniac."
"Leah, you're insufferable."
"And impossible!" She rose to go, and arranged the fur-lined Medici collar of her evening wrap in the dim mirror. "But I'm about to be punished for my sins. The Duke made me promise to go to this At Home. Mrs. Saracen, you know--she's one of the submerged Upper Ten, or she married one of them; I forget which, though I know she has something to do with a pickle, or a sauce. Very amusing old thing, too. She gives you a nutshell biography of every one before she introduces."
"What on earth for?"
"Oh, so that you may be warned against people's skeletons. Mrs. Saracen points out the cupboard and tells you not to open it, and of course you do."
Lady Canvey chuckled. "Rather clever. And her friends----?"
"Male and female, I believe. She collects people who have done something."