“I think not,” said Captain Charity, and he said: “But you are very like Michael.”
“Michael?” quoth my lord. “And who, pray, is your Michael?”
“The archangel,” said Captain Charity, and that was that, for Lady Surplice, who was fairly taken with the dark beauty of the stranger, could no longer brook these masculine asides. She said: “My dear Captain Charity, you must be introduced. It is quite usual. I have already presented you to His Highness. He is charming. Here are Dame Warp and Lady Pynte, who buys her shoes at Fortnum and Mason’s and rides to hounds four days in the week all through the summer just to set a good example. While this is Miss Pamela Star, who was left many millions by an Armenian. Armenians are rather difficult, my dear Captain Charity, but she is charming. And this is Shelmerdene, who has no surname because she has no surname, but who is becoming the heroine of all the ladies in all the suburbs because a misguided young man once put her into a book. Ah, and Fay! My dear Captain Charity, this is Lady Fay Paradise, the most beautiful woman in England. She never eats with her meals and never uses the same lover twice. Do you, darling? Whereas here is Lady Amelia Peep, who is as yet unmarried but she writes poetry about birds and her father wants to be made a Duke. You will like her. She is appointed with every modern convenience. And here—Percy, where are you? Ah, there he is, always admiring works of art! Look at the back of his head—the strength, the charm, the moral poise of it! Percy, come here at once! This, my dear Captain Charity, is Lord Marketharborough, who is a Lord Chancellor, you know. Aren’t you, Percy? But why do you not answer me? Is this a time for silence?”
“Dinner,” said the man Talbot, “is served, my lady.”
“Good!” said Lord Marketharborough.
Now the high position that Lady Surplice had won for herself in the hierarchy of hostesses was due to nothing so much as to the fact that she would not ever tolerate any but general conversation about her table. Whereas, said Dwight-Rankin, at every other dinner in London one must be continually blathering in whispers to one’s right or left to women who have nothing to say and don’t know how to say it, so that there never can be any conversational give-and-take about the table. But Lady Surplice most properly insisted on conversational give-and-take at her parties. She gave, you took. She gave, said Dwight-Rankin, magnificently.
IV
Lady Surplice said: “I detest self-conscious people. No one was ever self-conscious until the middle classes were invented. Oscar Wilde invented the middle classes so that he could make fun of them, as he would not have dreamt of making fun of his betters, like that Somerset Maugham man. Unfortunately Oscar died without making a will, and as no one knew what to do with his invention we let them, with usual English slackness, grow until they have swamped the whole country.”
“The other day,” said the Lady Amelia Peep, “I went into my father’s study to tell him that I was engaged to be married——”
“But, Amelia, you are not!” cried Lady Pynte.