Here, too, were new names, some of them, if not most of them, of a foreign turn to their syllables--New York, Melbourne, Buenos Ayres, Johannesburg.

His lip curled a little with almost playful scorn.

At St.Petersburg, Vienna, and elsewhere he had been vaguely conscious of these social changes; but they did not come within the ambit of his daily life, and so it had not mattered.
And there was no reason why it should matter now.

His England was a land the original elements of which would not change, had not changed; for the old small inner circle had not been invaded, was still impervious to the wash of wealth and snobbery and push.

That refuge had its sequestered glades, if perchance it was unilluminating and rather heavily decorous; so that he could let the climbers, the toadies, the gold-spillers, and the bribers have the middle of the road.
It did not matter so much that London was changing fast.