“Don’t you know whether you’ve got a husband?” he protested.
“I don’t know what I’d better let you believe. Yes, on the whole, I think you may as well assume that I’ve got a husband,” she concluded.
“And a lover, too?” he asked.
“Really! I like your impertinence!” She bridled. “I only asked to show a polite interest. I knew the answer would be an indignant negative. You’re an Englishwoman, and you’re nice. Oh, one can see with half an eye that you’re nice. But that a nice Englishwoman should have a lover is as inconceivable as that she should have side-whiskers. It’s only the reg’lar bad-uns in England who have lovers. There’s nothing between the family pew and the divorce court. One nice Englishwoman is a match for the whole Eleven Thousand Virgins of Cologne.”
“To hear you talk, one might fancy you were not English yourself. For a man of the name of Field, you’re uncommonly foreign. You look rather foreign too, you know, by-the-bye. You haven’t at all an English cast of countenance,” she considered.
“I’ve enjoyed the advantages of a foreign education. I was brought up abroad,” he explained.
“Where your features unconsciously assimilated themselves to a foreign type? Where you learned a hundred thousand strange little foreign things, no doubt? And imbibed a hundred thousand unprincipled little foreign notions? And all the ingenuous little foreign prejudices and misconceptions concerning England?” she questioned.
“Most of them,” he assented.
“Perfide Albion? English hypocrisy?” she pursued.
“Oh, yes, the English are consummate hypocrites. But there’s only one objection to their hypocrisy—it so rarely covers any wickedness. It’s such a disappointment to see a creature stalking towards you, laboriously draped in sheep’s clothing, and then to discover that it’s only a sheep. You, for instance, as I took the liberty of intimating a moment ago, in spite of your perfectly respectable appearance, are a perfectly respectable woman. If you weren’t, wouldn’t I be making furious love to you, though!”