"You shall!" said the Proud Briton.
The Perfect Stranger, under the guidance of the Proud Briton went everywhere and saw everything.
He saw a sweet, though apparently semi-suffocated, young girl dressed (or, as he would by unaided judgment have concluded, undressed) for her first ball.
He saw an elderly fine lady, a high-nosed dame de par le monde, prepared—he would have said, painted and glazed—for a high, social "function."
He saw a fair ingénue, under the eyes of her vigilant mamma and chaperon, in one evening waltzing with, and trying to win, as more permanent partners, an elderly but opulent Satyr, and a youthful, brainless, but titled Cloten.
He heard conversation which the talkers themselves laughingly called risqué (and which he would grimly have called rude) at fashionable dinner-tables between smirking matrons and leering elderly men.
He witnessed the vagaries of despot Fashion, the (as he considered) "immodesty" of "full dress," the "impropriety" of flagrant "cosmeticism," the "unhealthiness" of inadequate or superfluous clothing, the "cruelty" of corsets, the "vulgarity" and wanton murderousness of bird-destroying feather trimmings.
These, and many more follies, improprieties and wickedness the Perfect Stranger was wondering witness of.
"But," observed the Perfect Stranger, "where is the 'Matron's Hiss'?"