That was that if I must meet Richard Dawson I should certainly be as cold to him as was compatible with civility to those in whose houses I might meet him.
For we were not all a century behind our times.

Some of us had a Dublin season every year and had been presented at Court, and some of us even went to London for the season.
Lady Ardaragh was one of those.

She used to quiz us openly for our old-fashioned ways, but so sweetly that even my grandmother laughed with her.

And she used to say that if one were too particular about one's visiting-list so as to exclude the newly rich people, one would have to mark off half Park Lane and that wonderful district which she would have us believe lay all about it.

One met the oddest people in her drawing-room, where she fluttered about among them like a gay little butterfly while Sir Arthur, her serious husband, locked himself away among his books.
"If I hadn't such oddities I should bore myself to extinction, dear Lady St.Leger," she said to my grandmother once.