He preferred this to addressing anyone in particular, and his eye sought and found, and gathered by instinct, the last loiterer without the charmed circle.
"Yes," he was saying, "it is tasteful, and something more.

It illustrates, as you well say, the better side of our excitable neighbours across the Channel.

Setting patriotism apart and regarding the question merely in its--ah--philosophical aspect, it has often occurred to me to wonder how a nation so expert in the arts of life, so--how shall I put it?
--" "Natty," suggested one of his hearers; but he waved the word aside.
"-- of such lightness of touch, as I might describe it,--I say, it has often occurred to me to wonder how such a nation could so far mistake its destiny and the designs of Providence (inscrutable though they be) as to embark on a career of foreign conquest which can only--ah-- have one end." "Come to grief," put in Lady Bateson, a dowager in a crimson cap with military feathers.

She was supposed to cherish a hopeless passion for Endymion.

Also, she was supposed to be acting as Dorothea's chaperon tonight; but having with little exertion found partners for a niece of her own, a sprightly young lady on a visit from Bath, felt that she deserved to relax her mind in a little intellectual talk.