At first we seem to have split upon the moral quality of the aristocracy, and I had an odd sense that in some way too feminine for me to understand our hostess had aggrieved her. She said, I know, that Champneys distressed her; made her “eager for work and reality again.”
“But aren't these people real?”
“They're so superficial, so extravagant!”
I said I was not shocked by their unreality. They seemed the least affected people I had ever met. “And are they really so extravagant?” I asked, and put it to her that her dresses cost quite as much as any other woman's in the house.
“It's not only their dresses,” Margaret parried. “It's the scale and spirit of things.”
I questioned that. “They're cynical,” said Margaret, staring before her out of the window.
I challenged her, and she quoted the Brabants, about whom there had been an ancient scandal. She'd heard of it from Altiora, and it was also Altiora who'd given her a horror of Lord Carnaby, who was also with us. “You know his reputation,” said Margaret. “That Normandy girl. Every one knows about it. I shiver when I look at him. He seems—oh! like something not of OUR civilisation. He WILL come and say little things to me.”
“Offensive things?”
“No, politenesses and things. Of course his manners are—quite right. That only makes it worse, I think. It shows he might have helped—all that happened. I do all I can to make him see I don't like him. But none of the others make the slightest objection to him.”
“Perhaps these people imagine something might be said for him.”