haughtily, crossed the room with a
cup of tea for a new arrival.

Paragot, gaunt and tight-buttoned in his famous frock coat--he had
donned it for the ceremonious afternoon, but Joanna (I think) had
suppressed the purple cravat with the yellow spots--was talking to an
elderly and bony female owning a great beak of a nose. I wondered how so
unprepossessing a person could be admitted into a refined assembly, but
I learned later that she was Lady Molyneux, one of the Great Personages
of the county. The lady seemed to be emphatic; so did Paragot. She
regarded him stonily out of flint-blue eyes. He waved his hands; she
raised her eyebrows. She was one of those women whose eyebrows in the
normal state are about three inches from the eyelids. I understood then
what superciliousness meant. Paragot raised his voice. At that moment
one of those strange coincidences occurred in which the ends of all
casual conversations fell together, and a shaft of silence sped through
the room, killing all sound save that of Paragot's utterance.

"But Great Heavens, Madam, babies don't grow in the cabbage patch, and
you are all well aware they don't, and it's criminal of your English
writers to mislead the young as to the facts of existence. Charlotte
Yonge is infinitely more immoral than Guy de Maupassant."

Then Paragot realized the dead stillness. He rose from his chair, looked
around at the shocked faces of the women and curates, and laughing
turned to Mrs. Rushworth.

"I was stating Zola to be a great ethical teacher, and Lady Molyneux
seemed disinclined to believe me."

"He is an author very little read in Melford," said the placid lady from
her sofa cushions, while the two or three women with whom she was in
converse gazed disapprovingly at my master.

"It would do the town good if it were steeped in his writings," said he.

As this was at a period when like hell you could not mention the name of
Zola to ears polite, no one ventured to argue the matter. Mrs.
Rushworth's plump faded lips quivered helplessly, and it was with a gush
of gratitude that she seized the hand of one of the ladies who rose to
take her leave, and save the situation. The little spell of shock was
broken. Groups resumed their mysterious conversations, and Paragot swung
to the hearth-rug and stood there in solitary defiance. I seized the
opportunity to escape from my two damsels. As I passed Lady Molyneux,
she turned to her neighbour.

"What a dreadful man!"