for them was not
a refreshing stream which ran by the road of everyday life, but
something which was to be heard at the Opera, and which enjoyed a close
alliance with sables and diamond tiaras. Pictures were of the Academy,
and, like all the best people, they invariably said, 'Have you seen
this year's show at Burlington House? My dear, it's frightful.' Nor
did they neglect literature in their curriculum. Though literature
lacks a yearly exhibition, such as is possessed by music and painting,
they made it a subject for gossip, and denounced H. G. Wells as a
'bounder.' 'I never read him, Mr. Selwyn,' said the obscure-royalist
person. 'My cousin the Duchess of Atwater met him, and says--well,
really, she says he's quite impossible.'

With a mixture of wonder and amusement Selwyn watched the spectacle of
these people of more than average education and intelligence contenting
themselves with a perpetual routine of small-talk and genteel
insularity, and he wondered how it was that a race so gifted with the
blessed quality of humour could evolve a state of society offering such
a butt to the shafts of ridicule.

He liked Lord Durwent, whose unfailing gentleness and courtesy would
have stamped him as a gentleman in any walk of life. Although his mind
was comparatively unimpressionable to new ideas, it was saturated with
the qualities of integrity and fairness, and in his attitude towards
every one of his guests there was an old-world dignity, born of the
respect in which he held both himself and them. The study of this man
moving contentedly about his daily tasks, never making any one's day
harder by reason of his passing that way, was the first jolt Selwyn had
received in his gathering arraignment against English social life. By
way of contrast he pictured certain successful gentlemen of his
acquaintance in America, and the vision was not flattering to his
national self-esteem.

He also enjoyed the refreshing vitality of Lady Durwent, who never
quite lost her optimism no matter how tight was the grip of good form;
and he admired without stint the devotion of every one, regardless of
sex, to sport. Throughout the day there were constant expeditions that
necessitated long, invigorating hours in the open air; and it seemed to
the American that they were never so free from affectation, that the
comradeship between the men and the women was never so marked, as when
they were indulging their wise instinct for out-of-d