The Countess sighed. Then she reddened and clenched her hands.
‘I cannot bear to think of it,’ she cried. ‘We had a disgraceful night. I shall never forget it—or forgive it. It was not a debate at all; it was the exchange of unrestrained insults, rude personalities, humiliating recrimination.’
‘Take some breakfast first, my dear,’ said the Professor, ‘and then you shall tell me as much as you please.’
Most of the breakfast was eaten by the Professor herself. Long before she had finished, Constance sprang from the table and began to pace the room in uncontrollable agitation.
‘It is hard—oh! it is very hard—to preserve even common dignity, when such attacks are made. One noble peeress taunted me with my youth. It is two years since I came of age—I am twenty,—but never mind that. Another threw in my teeth my—my—my cousin Chester,’—she blushed violently; ‘to think that the British House of Peeresses should have fallen so low! Another charged me with trying to be thought the loveliest woman in London; can we even listen to such things without shame? And the Duchesse de la Vieille Roche’—here she laughed bitterly—‘actually had the audacity to attack my Political Economy—mine; and I was Senior in the Tripos! When they were tired of abusing me, they began upon each other. No reporters were present. The Chancellor, poor lady! tried in vain to maintain order; the scene—with the whole House, as it seemed, screeching, crying, demanding to be heard, throwing accusations, innuendoes, insinuations, at each other—made one inclined to ask if this was really the House of Peeresses, the Parliament of Great Britain, the place where one would expect to find the noblest representatives in the whole world of culture and gentlehood.’
Constance paused, exhausted but not satisfied. She had a good deal more to say, but for the moment she stood by the window, with flashing eyes and trembling lips.
‘The last mixed Parliament,’ said the Professor, thoughtfully—‘that in which the few men who were members seceded in a body—presented similar characteristics. The abuse of the liberty of speech led to the abolition of the Lower House. Absit omen!’
‘Thank Heaven,’ replied the Countess, ‘that it was abolished! Since then we have had—at least we have generally had—decorum and dignity of debate.’
‘Until last night, dear Constance, and a few similar last nights. Take care.’
‘They cannot abolish us,’ said Constance, ‘because they would have nothing to fall back upon.’