If by the same token I'm 'horrible,' as you call me," he pursued, "it's only because I'm in everyway so beastly superficial.

All the same I do sometimes go into things, and I insist on knowing," he again broke out, "what it exactly was you had in mind in saying to Mrs.Brook the things about Nanda and myself that she repeated to me." "You 'insist,' you silly man ?"--the Duchess had veered a little to indulgence.

"Pray on what ground of right, in such a connexion, do you do anything of the sort ?" Poor Mitchy showed but for a moment that he felt pulled up.

"Do you mean that when a girl liked by a fellow likes him so little in return-- ?" "I don't mean anything," said the Duchess, "that may provoke you to suppose me vulgar and odious enough to try to put you out of conceit of a most interesting and unfortunate creature; and I don't quite as yet see--though I dare say I shall soon make out!--what our friend has in her head in tattling to you on these matters as soon as my back's turned.

Petherton will tell you--I wonder he hasn't told you before--why Mrs.Grendon, though not perhaps herself quite the rose, is decidedly in these days too near it." "Oh Petherton never tells me anything!" Mitchy's answer was brisk and impatient, but evidently quite as sincere as if the person alluded to had not been there.
The person alluded to meanwhile, fidgeting frankly in his chair, alternately stretching his legs and resting his elbows on his knees, had reckoned as small the profit he might derive from this colloquy.