t?
(_She feels she must make an effort to recover lost ground._) I fully
expected to be at Homburg this year.

_Mrs. All._ Then you would have met Lady NEURALINE MENTHOL She _was_
ordered there, I happen to know.

_Mrs. Ard._ Really, you don't say so? Lady NEURALINE! Well, that's the
first _I've_ heard of it. (_It is also the first time she has heard of
HER, but she trusts to be spared so humiliating an admission._)

_Mrs. All._ It's a fact, I can assure you. You know her, perhaps?

_Mrs. Ard._ (_who would dearly like to say she does, if she only
dared_). Well, I can hardly say I exactly _know_ her. I know _of_ her.
I've met her about, and so on. (_She tells herself this is quite as
likely to be true as not._)

_Mrs. All._ (_who, of course, does not know Lady NEURALINE either_).
Ah, she is a most delightful person--requires _knowing_, don't you
know.

_Mrs. Ard._ So many in her position do, don't they? (_So far as she
is concerned--they ALL do._) You'd think it was haughtiness--but it's
really only _manner_.

_Mrs. All._ (_feeling that she can go ahead with safety now_). I have
never found anything of _that_ sort in Lady NEURALINE myself (_which
is perfectly true_). She's rather odd and flighty, but _quite_ a
dear. By the way, _how_ sad it is about those poor dear CHUTNEYS--the
Countess, don't you know!

_Mrs. Ard._ Ah (_as if she knew all the rest of the family_), I don't
know _her_ at all.

_Mrs. All._ Such a sweet woman--but the trouble she's had with her
eldest boy, Lord MANGO! He married quite beneath him, you know, some
girl from the provinces--not a county-family girl even.

_Mrs. Ard._ (_shocked_). Dear, dear! _not_ a county family!

_Mrs. All._ No; somebody quite common--I forget the name, but it was
either GHERKIN or ONION, or something of that sort. I was told they
had been in Chili a good while. Poor MANGO never had much taste, or
he would never have got mixed up with such a set. Anyway, he's got
himself into a terrible pickle. I hear Capsicums is actually to be
sold to pay his debts.

_Mrs. Ard._ You don't say so! Capsicums! Gracious!

_Mrs. All._ Yes, _isn't_ it a pity! Such a lovely old place as it
was, too--_the_ most comfortable house to stay at in all England; so
beautifully _warm_! But it's dreadful to think of how the aristocracy
are taking to marry out of their own set. Look at the Duke of
DRAGNET--married a Miss DUCKWEED--goodness only knows where he picked
her up! but he got enta