“Never remind me of anything I said. I can’t endure it! I believe you want to get in the swim, don’t you?”
“Please, I don’t quite understand, ma’am.”
Her visitor was silently finishing nibbling at a caviare biscuit and reflecting what a goose she had been to go to Egypt instead of utilizing this Massarene vein. She must certainly, she thought, do all she could for these people.
“You’re Catholic, aren’t you?” she said abruptly.
The horror of an Ulster woman spread itself over the flaccid and pallid clay in which the features of her hostess were moulded.
“Oh no, my lady, we were never Romans,” she said, so aghast that she was carried out of herself into the phraseology of her earlier years. “We were never Romans. How could you think it of us?”
“It would be better for you if you were,” said Lady Kenilworth unfeelingly and irreverently. “Catholics are chic; and then all the great Catholic families push a convert unanimously. They’d get a sweep to all the best houses if he only went often enough to the Oratory.”
“We’ve always been loyal people,” murmured Mrs. Massarene piteously; “always Orange as Orange could be.”
“Loyalty’s nothing,” said Lady Kenilworth, contemptuously eyeing the beautiful gold urn with the envious appreciation of a dealer’s glance. “Loyalty don’t ‘take the cake.’ Nobody is afraid of it. It’s all fear now that we go by——”
“And gain,” she was about to add but checked the words unuttered.