hows anything. But it looks so
stupid in _me_: one is always expected to know----"

"What an increase to the responsibilities of a hostess! She must know
all the ins and outs of her acquaintances' unlawful affections as a
Prussian officer knows the French by-roads! How simple an affair it used
to be when the Victorian reign was young, and Lord and Lady So-and-So
and Mr. and Mrs. Nobody all came to stay for a week in twos and twos as
inevitably as we buy fancy pigeons in pairs!"

"You pretend to regret those days, but you know you'd be horribly bored
if you had always to go out with me."

"Politeness would require me to deny, but truthfulness would compel me
to assent."

"Of course it would. You don't want anybody with you who has heard all
your best stories a thousand times, and knows what your doctor has told
you not to eat; I don't want anybody who has seen how I look when I'm
ill, and knows where my false hair is put on. It is quite natural. By
the way, Boom says Ovid's ladies had perukes, too, as one of them put
her wig on upside down before him, and it chilled his feelings towards
her; it would chill most people's. I wonder if they made them well in
those days, and what they cost."

"I think you might have invited _some_ of the husbands."

"Oh, dear, no. Why? They're all staying somewhere else."

"And your friends are never jealous, I suppose; at least, never about
their husbands?"

"An agreeable woman is never jealous of anybody. She hasn't time to be.
It is only the women who can't amuse themselves who make that sort of
fuss."

"Are you an agreeable woman, my dear?"

"I have always been told so, by everybody except yourself."

Lord Usk rose and laughed as he lighted a cigar.

"Well, I won't have any scandal in the house. Mind that."

"You'd better put that up on a placard, as you have put 'No fees allowed
to the servants,' up in the hall."

"I'm sure I would with pleasure if I thought anybody would attend to it.
I don't like you're set, Dolly. That's the truth. I wish you'd drop
nine-tenths of 'em."

"My dear George, I wish you would mind your own business, to use a very
vulgar expression. Do I ever say anything when you talk nonsense in the
Lords, and when you give your political picnics and shout yourself
hoarse to the farmers who go away and vote against your man? Do I ever
say anything when you shoot pheasants which cost you a sovereign a head
for their corn, and stalk stags which cost you