Page:The Plutocrat (1927).pdf/71

 presumptuous fool. Lightnings failing, something ought to be done about it, the playwright thought; and he had impulses to do something about it himself—and to begin by throwing the fellow out of the room, no matter how difficult that might be. Moreover, his inimical urgings were shared by his two friends; Mr. Jones muttered threateningly, while Macklyn said aloud, "I'll wring the boor's neck, if he makes any more references of that kind."

But the goddess-like lady herself was apparently unaware that she had been blasphemed, and her impassiveness was unmarred by the slightest access of hauteur. Her quiet gaze did not waver from her cards; there was not a flicker of eyelid, nor any deepening in the eye itself; any observer might well have concluded that she had no knowledge of the English language. And thus, the shocked but romancing playwright said to himself, did some ancestress of Mme. Momoro's look in the tumbril on the way to the guillotine, cool, untouched, and untouchable, while the canaille surged about the cart, powerless to make her conscious of them.

The canaille of the present occasion did not delay upon the subject, but, after a philanthropic smiling upon the admirable lady, went on talking: "No, sir;