“It ought not to be, Lady Something!” Mrs Chilleywater looked vindictive.
Née Victoria Gellybore Frinton, and the sole heir of Lord Seafairer of Sevenelms, Kent, Mrs Harold Chilleywater, since her marriage “for Love,” had developed a disconcerting taste for fiction—a taste that was regarded at the Foreign Office with disapproving forbearance.... So far her efforts (written under her maiden name in full with her husband’s as well appended) had been confined to lurid studies of low life (of which she knew nothing at all), but the Hon. Harold Chilleywater had been gently warned, that if he was not to remain at Kairoulla until the close of his career, the style of his wife must really grow less virile.
“I agree with V.G.F.,” the Hon. Lionel Limpness murmured fondling meditatively his “Charlie Chaplin” moustache—“Life ought not to be.”
“It’s a mistake to bother oneself over matters that can’t be remedied.”
Mrs Chilleywater acquiesced: “You’re right indeed, Lady Something,” she said, “but I’m so sensitive.... I seem to know when I talk to a man, the colour of his braces...! I say to myself: ‘Yours are violet....’ ‘Yours are blue....’ ‘His are red....’”
“I’ll bet you anything, Mrs Chilleywater, you like, you won’t guess what mine are,” the Hon. Lionel Limpness said.
“I should say, Mr Limpness, that they were multihued—like Jacob’s,” Mrs Chilleywater replied, as she withdrew her head.
The Ambassadress prepared to follow:
“Come, Mr Limpness,” she exclaimed, “we’ve exhausted the poor fellow quite enough—and besides, here comes his dinner.”
“Open the champagne, Mario,” his master commanded immediately they were alone.