"Am I such a nuisance?" she said, dropping her hands on her knee with a little sigh. Then she turned to Tressady.
"But Lady Leven really makes it out worse than it is. We haven't even approached a Factory Act all the afternoon."
Lady Leven sprang forward in her chair. "Because! because, my dear, we simply declined to let you. We made a league—didn't we, Mr. Bennett?—even you joined it."
Bennett smiled.
"Lady Maxwell overworks herself—we all know that," he said, his look, at once kind, honest, and perennially embarrassed, passing from Lady Leven to his hostess.
"Oh, don't sympathise, for Heaven's sake!" cried Betty. "Wage war upon her—it's our only hope."
"Don't you think Sunday at least ought to be frivolous?" said Tressady, smiling, to Lady Maxwell.
"Well, personally, I like to talk about what interests me on Sunday as well as on other days," she said with a frank simplicity; "but I know I ought to be kept in order—I become a terrible bore."
Frank Leven roused himself from the sofa on which he had languidly subsided.
"Bores?" he said indignantly, "we're all bores. We all have been bores since people began to think about what they're pleased to call 'social work.' Why should I love my neighbour?—I'd much rather hate him. I generally do."