friends are all charming people."

"I'll tell you what I do mean,--that I don't like the house made a joke
of in London; I'll shut it up and go abroad if the thing goes on. If a
scandal's begun in town in the season, it always comes down here to
carry on; if there are two people fond of each other when they shouldn't
be, you always ask 'em down here and make pets of 'em. As you're taking
to quoting Ovid, I may as well tell you that in his time the honest
women didn't do this sort of thing; they left it to the light-o'-loves
under the porticoes."

"I really don't know what I've done that I should be called an honest
woman! One would think you were speaking to the housemaids! I wish you'd
go and stay in somebody else's house: you always spoil things here."

"Very sorry. I like my own shooting. Three days here, three days there,
three days t'other place, and expected to leave the game behind you and
to say 'thanks' if your host gives you a few brace to take away with
you,--not for me, if I know it, while there's a bird in the covers at my
own places."

"I thought you were always bored at home?"

"Not when I'm shooting. I don't mind having the house full, either, only
I want you to get decenter people in it. Why, look at your
list!--they're all paired, like animals in the ark. Here's Lady Arthur
for Hugo Mountjoy, here's Iona and Madame de Caillac, here's Mrs. Curzon
for Lawrence, here's Dick Wootton and Mrs. Faversham, here's the Duke
and Lady Dolgelly, here's old Beaumanoir and Olive Dawlish. I say it's
absolutely indecent, when you know how all these people are talked
about!"

"If one waited for somebody not talked about, one would have an empty
house or fill it with old fogies. My dear George, haven't you ever seen
that advertisement about matches which will only light on their own
boxes? People in love are like those matches. If you ask the matches
without the boxes, or the boxes without the matches, you won't get
anything out of either."

"Ovid was born too early: he never knew this admirable illustration!"

"There's only one thing worse than inviting people without the people
they care about; it is to invite them with the people they're tired of:
I did that once last year. I asked Madame de Saumur and Gervase
together, and then found that they had broken with each other two months
before. That is the sort of blunder I do hate to make!"

"Well, nothing happened?"

"Of course nothing happened. Nobody ever s