He was clearly eager to get back to the conversation with Guy which she had interrupted by her arrival and needs.
“But you know, Guy, the only amusing relation we had was old Lionel Fane—he was a priceless old boy ... what was it he used to say again when he was introduced to a lady?”
“‘How d’ye do, how d’ye do, oh beautiful passionate body that never has ached with a heart!’ And then, do you remember how he used to turn down his sock and scratch his ankle, and then look round with a grin and say, ‘I don’t mean to be provocative.’ ...”
“He was priceless! And then....”
“For God’s sake stop talking about your beastly relations,” growled Arnold; but Guy went on, undaunted.
“But the person I should have liked to have been was my mother or yours when they were young—their portraits by Richmond hanging in the Academy with a special policeman and roped off from the crowd—and that in the days of the Jersey Lily, too! Oh, it would have been glorious to have been a beauty of the eighties.”
“Yes; but one might as well have gone the whole hog, you know—been the Prince of Wales’s mistress, and that sort of thing. Your mother, of course, didn’t make such a very bad match, but mine—a miserable younger son of a Scotch laird! I mean, I think they might have done a lot better for themselves.”
“Oh, Lord! Let’s start a conversation about our relations, Teresa. Edward Lane, now ...” said Arnold.
But he could not down the shrill scream of Guy, once more taking up the tale: “Well, they weren’t, of course, so cinemaish as the Sisters Gunning, for instance ... but still, it was all rather amusing ... and all these queer Victorian stunts they invented....”
“Kicking off their shoes in the middle of a reel, and that sort of thing? Uncle Jimmy says there was quite a little war in Dublin as to which was the belle of the Royal Hospital Ball, then afterwards, too, in Scotland at the Northern Meeting....”