Before the women swept in a body from the room, I understood that his object in life would henceforth be to make me sensible of his great worth and charm.  All these masterful, forward sentiments sounded so comic, expressing themselves in his squeaky voice, I could not help smiling.  He became radiant.  He did not guess in the least what amused me.

Although the salon is immense, the ten or twelve women all crowded around the fireplace.  It was a damp, chilly evening.

They all seemed to know one another very well, and called each other by their Christian names, so until Babykins again gave me some information I did not realize who people were.

The purple lady is Lady Grenellen; her husband is at the war.  She is most attractive.  She sat on a big sofa and smoked cigarettes rapidly in a little amber holder.  She must have got through at least three or four of them before the men came in.

Lady Tilchester and two other women were deep in South-African news, the rest talked about books and their clothes, but Babykins and Letitia exchanged views upon the scandal of the time.

“In my day,” Letitia said, “it sometimes happened that men made love and ran away with a woman because they found they liked her better than anything else in the world.  It was a great sin, but their passion was mixed with respect, and the elopement constituted the wedding ceremony.  Now you remain on at home until you are found out, and then the husband takes a gratuity and the matter is hushed up, and probably the lover passes on to your best friend, an added feather in his cap.”

“Dear Lady Lambourne, how severe you are!” chirped Babykins.  “And you really should not use that little word ‘you.’  Of course, you don’t mean any of us, but it sounds unkind and might be misunderstood—­especially,” she added, in a whisper to me, “as that is the exact case of Cordelia Grenellen.”

Letitia (Lady Lambourne) has a distinct voice and decided opinions.  She continued, as though no interruption had taken place: 

“If the matter was only for love, too, I should still have nothing to say; but it is so often for a string of pearls, or some new carriage-horses.”

“But, surely, it is more logical to have that reason than no reason at all, like the case of your poor cousin.  I understood that was sheer foolishness, and Lord Edam did not even pretend to care for her.”

Lady Lambourne looked daggers and remained speechless.  “What scandalous things you are all saying,” laughed Lady Grenellen from her sofa.  “Letitia, you are sitting there and being epigrammatic, just like the people in those unreal society plays they had last year.  We are all perfectly contented and happy if you would let us alone.”

“One cannot but deplore the change,” said Lady Lambourne.

“Personally, I am delighted with everything as it is,” cooed Babykins.  “Life must be much pleasanter now than in your day, dear Lady Lambourne; such a fuss and pretending, and such hypocrites you must all have been—­as, of course, human nature was the same then, and since the beginning of time.  We have always eaten and drank too rich food and wine in our class and have not had enough to do, so we can’t help being as we are, can we?”