Cicely Seymour looks over her shoulder at him and remarks slightingly: “You are a great tease, Lord Marlow. You make me think I am in the schoolroom at Alfreton with my brothers home from Eton for Christmas. Do you really think that chaff is wit?”
“I am not chaffing, Miss Seymour. I am in deadly earnest. This modest bunch must hold a deal of meaning. Who are the Brown family? Where is ‘our place’? What is the meeting which must be postponed because a bloated aristocrat, rolling in ill-gotten wealth, requires that corrupting luxury known as mustard and cress?”
Everybody laughs, except Cicely Seymour.
“Yes, Wilfrid,” says Lady Southwold; “who are the Brown family?”
“To whom you are always at home,” adds his uncle.
“And Annie who sends button-holes with love,” adds Marlow.
Bertram replies with icy brevity, “A perfectly respectable young woman.”
“And the respectable one’s address?” asks Marlow. “Where is ‘our place’? I am seized with an irresistible longing to eat mustard and cress. I never did eat it, but still——”
Bertram eyes him very disagreeably. “The Browns are persons I esteem. I should not give their address to persons for whom I have no esteem.”
“My dear Wilfrid!” cries his aunt. “How altruism does sour the temper!”