his admiration of Madame Sabaroff is much mitigated by his sense
that she has a rather derisive opinion of himself. "I don't say
she isn't an agreeable woman, but she gives me the idea of
artificiality,--insincerity,--mystery."

"Just because she's a Russian!" cries his wife, with disdain.

"My dear George," observes Brandolin, "there are preconceived ideas
about all nationalities. As a rule, they are completely false. The
received Continental idea is that an Englishman is a bluff, blunt,
unpleasant, opinionated person, very cross, very clean too it is true,
but on the strength of his tub and his constitution despising all the
rest of mankind. Now, how completely absurd such an opinion is! You
yourself are an example of the _suaviter in modo, fortiter in re_, of
which the true-blue Briton always gives so admirable an example."

Usk laughs, but sulkily; he has the impression that his beloved friend
is making fun of him, but he is not quite sure. He himself believes that
he is an ideal Englishman; Brandolin is only half or a quarter of one,
he does not shoot, wears furs in winter, only drinks very light Rhenish
wine, never goes to any church, and never cuts his hair very short.
Added to this, he has no fixed political opinion, except a general
impression that England and the world in general are going down-hill as
fast as they can, "tobogganing" as they say in Canada, at the rate of
fifty miles a minute, to land in the slough of Socialism and be picked
out of it by some military despot,--democracy invariably ending in
absolutism.

"What ridiculous rubbish!" says his wife. "You might as well say that
the _demoiselles-mannequins_ at Worth's or Rodrigue's are conspiring for
the Orleanists when they try on my clothes."

"They are conspiring for the ruin of your family," says Usk, with a
groan. "Whose purse can stand those Paris prices?"

"What an irrelevant remark!" cries Lady Usk. "You are always dragging
money-questions into everything."

"Those _faiseurs_, as you call 'em," continues Usk, unheeding, "are at
the root of half the misery of society. Women get into debt up to their
eyes for their toilets, and they don't care what abomination they do if
they get enough out of it to go on plunging. Hundred-guinea gowns soon
make up a pretty total when you change 'em three times a day."

"And if women are guys aren't the men furious?" asks his wife. "Even if
they try to economize, aren't they always taunted with being dow