"I hope," said Lord Bentham, "that your Excellency's impressions of the English are favourable. We do our best to make ourselves agreeable to distinguished strangers who visit us."
"And we love to know what they think of us," added Lady Margaret Solby, who had drawn near the General and now placed herself in front of him, that he might have an opportunity of noting at his ease all the good points of a handsome Englishwoman.
"I have never," said Sabaroff to Lord Bentham, "met such kind and hospitable people as your compatriots; abroad they are sometimes haughty and, I may add" ...
"Extremely disagreeable," said his lordship, finishing the sentence.
"No, I do not say that. In any case, that could only be on the surface, for at home they are a revelation, really the most charming hosts in the world. To study a man, you must study him when he is at home. On foreign soil he is playing a part that he only knows imperfectly. He is hampered, and is scarcely a free agent. He is often misunderstood. He is not in his proper setting, much less in his element. I am convinced that when the Creator made man, He must have said to him, 'Thou shalt stay at home.'"
"A commandment which we English have sadly neglected, then," remarked Philip.
"And our English women, General?" questioned Lady Margaret, simpering and attracting his attention by expert fan wavings to a figure which she knew was above criticism, a figure such as English women can claim almost a monopoly in.
"Oh, they are beautiful, they are glorious!" said Sabaroff, with the air of a connoisseur; "they are dreams, angels of beauty. What flowing lines, what graceful proportions, what lovely complexions, what fine delicately carved features! They are vignettes! When an Englishwoman is beautiful, madame, she is beyond competition."
"And when she is ugly?" said Lady Margaret.
"Oh, Heaven help her!" said Lorimer, who had just been introduced to Sabaroff, and who, surrounded as he was by pretty women, did not fear to risk a joke at the expense of the absent, who are always out of it.