But he knew it was good form to be penitent whenever it seemed to be expected, and he liked Margaret well enough to hope that she would go.

He did not care very much for the society of women at any time.

He was more or less married when he was at home, which was never for long together, and when he was away he preferred the untrammelled conversational delights of a foreign green-room to the twaddle of the embassies or to the mingled snobbery and philistinism produced by the modern fusion of the almighty dollar and the _ancienne noblesse_.
And so he was in trouble just now, and his one idea was to submit to everything the Countess might say, and then to go and "give it" to Mr.
Barker for producing so much complication.

But Margaret had nothing more to say about the party, and launched out into a discussion of the voyage.

She introduced a cautious "if" in most of her sentences.