IT was one evening shortly after I had lunched with Mrs. W. that Barfleur and I dined with Miss E., the young actress who had come over on the steamer with us. It was interesting to find her in her own rather smart London quarters surrounded by maid and cook, and with male figures of the usual ornamental¹ sort in the immediate² background. One of them was a ruddy, handsome, slightly corpulent French count of manners the pink of perfection. He looked for all the world like the French counts introduced into American musical comedy,—just the right type of collar about his neck, the perfect shoe, the close-fitting, well-tailored suit, the mustachios and hair barbered to the last touch. He was charming, too, in his easy, gracious aloofness³, saying only the few things that would be of momentary⁴ interest and pressing nothing.

 

Miss E. had prepared an appetizing luncheon⁵. She had managed to collect a group of interesting people—a Mr. T., for instance, whose bête noire was clergymen and who stood prepared by collected newspaper clippings and court proceedings⁶, gathered over a period of years, to prove that all ecclesiastics⁷ were scoundrels. He had, as he insisted, amazing data, showing that the most perverted⁸ of all English criminals were usually sons of bishops¹⁰ and that the higher you rose in the scale of hieratic authority the worse were the men in charge. The delightful¹¹ part of it all was the man’s profound seriousness of manner, a thin, magnetic,

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