"All husbands," says Lord Usk, with a chuckle, "are brutes, and all wives are angels. C'est imprimé!"
"I hope no one will ever call me an angel! I should know at once that I was a bore!"
"No danger, my lady: you've no wings on your shoulders, and you've salt on your tongue."
"I'm sure you mean to be odiously rude, but to my taste it's a great compliment."
"My dear Alan," says Dorothy Usk, having got him at a disadvantage in her boudoir one-quarter of an hour after luncheon, "what has there been between you and the Princess Sabaroff? Everybody feels there is something. It is in the air. Indeed, everybody is talking about it. Pray tell me. I am dying to know."
Gervase is silent.
"Everybody in the house is sure of it," continues his hostess. "They don't say so, of course, but they think so. Nina Curzon, who is mauvaise langue, pretends even that she knows all the circumstances; and it would seem that they are not very nice circumstances. I really cannot consent to go on in the dark any longer."
"Ask the lady," replies Gervase, stiffly.
"I certainly shall do nothing so ill-bred. You are a man, you are a relation of mine, and I can say things to you I couldn't possibly say to a stranger, which Madame Sabaroff is quite to me. If you won't answer, I shall only suppose that you paid court to her and were 'spun,' as the boys say at the examinations."
"Not at all," says Gervase, haughtily.