"It appears so," Anthony discriminated gloomily; "but appearances are risky things to judge by. It may have charms for a voluptuary like you; but I"—and he took a tone of high austerity—"I, as an Englishman, have my suspicions of anything so flagrantly un-English."
"Apropos of things un-English," said Adrian, "I 'm pining for a serious word with you."
Anthony pulled a wry face.
"Oh, if you 've been attacked by one of your periodic spasms of seriousness," he sighed.
"It's about calling on Madame Torrebianca," said Adrian.
"Oh," sighed Anthony. With a presence of mind that I can't help thinking rather remarkable, he feigned a continuity of mood; but something went ping within him.
"Look here," said Adrian, imperatively. "I 'll thank you to drop that air of ineffable fatigue of yours, and to sit up and listen. I don't suppose you wish to be deliberately discourteous, do you? And as those ladies happen to be new-comers, and your immediate neighbours, not to say your tenants, I expect you are sufficiently acquainted with the usages of polite society to know that a failure on your part to call would be tantamount to a direct affront. Furthermore, as one of them (Miss Sandus is, unhappily, still in the Götterdämmerung of the Establishment), as Madame Torrebianca is coming to your house, as your guest, to hear Mass on Sunday morning, I sincerely hope I need n't tell you that it's simply de rigueur that you should call before that occasion."
He stood off, and raised his brown-red eyebrows, as who, from an altitude, speaking de par le Roi, should challenge contumacy.
But two could play at the game of eyebrow-raising. Anthony raised his.
"Coming as my guest? Coming as my guest? I like that," he exclaimed. "What have I to do with her coming? If every stranger to whom you choose to extend the privilege of hearing Mass in the Chapel, is thereby to be constituted a guest,—my guest,—I shall have my hands full indeed. If she's a guest at all, if she's anybody's guest, she's yours; You 've created the situation. Don't try to thrust the brunt of it on me."