"Oh! you are staying with them?" (This with a strong flavour of his superior manner; for the Pipers were really nobodies.)
"And what have you been doing with yourself? I haven't seen you anywhere," said Constance coolly.
"I have been out of town. But in any case we might possibly not have met. Have you been going out much?"
"Oh, as much as most people, I suppose. I was at the Aaronssohns' dance last night."
"The Aaronssohns!" exclaimed Theodore. (This time he was so astonished that he spoke quite naturally.) "I didn't know that you knew them."
"Oh, I don't know them."
"Then how did you get—I mean——"
"How did I get there? Dear me, Theodore, your visit to the country has given you a refreshing buttercup-and-daisy kind of air! Do you suppose that the Aaronssohns' ball-room was filled with their personal friends and acquaintances? Mrs. Griffin got me an invitation."
Now to be presented to Mrs. Griffin and to be invited to the Aaronssohns' were pet objects of Theodore Bransby's social ambition, and he had not yet compassed either of them.
"Oh, indeed!" said he, struggling, under the disadvantage of conscious ill-humour, to maintain that air of indifference to all things in heaven and earth which he imagined to be the completest manifestation of high breeding. "I suppose that was achieved through Mrs. Dormer-Smith's influence."