Whether from a secret intention of rebuking
Miss Dimmont for her associations with one socially so impossible as
Chauncy Wilson, or with the less amiable design of disciplining Miss
Merrivale for her friendship with Mrs. Sampson, the hostess adroitly
and deliberately turned the conversation to social themes, and thence
on to what perhaps were best described as the proprieties of caste.
She was too clever a woman to do this crudely, and indeed would have
seemed to any but the most acute observer to follow the conversation
rather than to lead it. Ethel and Elsie chatted briskly of the current
gossip of the day, and it was Mrs. Bodewin Ranger who was skilfully led
on to strike the keynote of the talk by saying,--
"Doesn't it seem to you that the modern fashion of admitting artists
into society is mixing up things terribly? Nowadays one is always
meeting queer people everywhere, and being told that they are writers
or painters."
The fine old lady smiled so genially that one seeing her benign
countenance framed in its beautiful snowy curls, must know her well to
realize that in truth she meant exactly what she said. Mrs.
Frostwinch's answering smile was not without a tinge of sarcasm,--
"It is worse than that," she said. "You even meet actors in quite
respectable houses."
"Oh, actors!" threw in Ethel Mott, briskly; "nowadays they even go
below the level of humanity and invite those things called
elocutionists.
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