“Never,” said Harold. “That is the one sin which a woman never pardons in another.”
“You do not know women—” with a little pitying smile. “A woman will forgive a woman for being more beautiful than herself—for being less virtuous than herself, but never for being better-dressed than herself.”
“For how many of the three sins do you ask forgiveness of woman—two or three?” said Harold, gently.
But instead of making an answer, Mrs. Mowbray said something about the necessity of cherishing a digestion. It was disgraceful, she said, that bread-and-butter and arithmetic should be forced upon a school boy—that such magnificent powers of digestion as he possessed should not be utilized ta the uttermost.
Lord Brackenthorpe said he knew a clever artist chap, who had drawn a sketch of about a thousand people crowding over one another, in an American hotel, in order to see a boy, who had been overheard asking his mother what was the meaning of the word dyspepsia.
Mrs. Mowbray wondered if the melancholy of Hamlet was due to a weak digestion.
Harold said he thought it should rather be accepted as evidence that there was a Schleswig-Holstein question even in Hamlet’s day.
Meantime, the pheasants and sparkling red Burgundy were affording compensation for the absence of any brilliant talk.
Then the young men lit their cigarettes. Mrs. Mowbray had never been known to risk her reputation (for femininity) by letting a cigarette between her lips; but her femininity was in no way jeopardized—rather was it accentuated—by her liking to be in the neighbourhood of where cigarettes were being smoked—that is, when the cigarettes were good and when the smokers were pleasant young men with titles, or even unpleasant young men with thousands.
After the lapse of an hour, a message came regarding Mrs. Mowbray’s brougham. Her guests rose and she looked about for her wrap.