His large, rather flamboyant person, his big white face and curling brown beard, his loud voice and his falsetto laugh, his absolutely certain opinions, above all the fervency of his consciousness of being Lord Ashbridge and all which that implied, completely filled any place he happened to be in, so that a room empty except for him gave the impression of being almost uncomfortably crowded.

This keen consciousness of his identity was naturally sufficient to make him very good humoured, since he was himself a fine example of the type that he admired most.

Probably only two persons in the world had the power of causing him annoyance, but both of these, by an irony of fate that it seemed scarcely possible to consider accidental, were closely connected with him, for one was his sister, the other his only son.
The grounds of their potentiality in this respect can be easily stated.

Barbara Comber, his sister (and so "one of us"), had married an extremely wealthy American, who, in Lord Ashbridge's view, could not be considered one of anybody at all; in other words, his imagination failed to picture a whole class of people who resembled Anthony Jerome.

He had hoped when his sister announced her intention of taking this deplorable step that his future brother-in-law would at any rate prove to be a snob--he had a vague notion that all Americans were snobs--and that thus Mr.Jerome would have the saving grace to admire and toady him.