Page:The Portrait of a Lady (London, Macmillan & Co., 1881) Volume 3.djvu/149

 last, but to-day the air has grown so dense that delicate things are literally not recognised. Now, we have liked you" And Osmond hesitated a moment, laying his hand gently on Goodwood's knee and smiling with a mixture of assurance and embarrassment. "I am going to say something extremely offensive and patronising, but you must let me have the satisfaction of it. We have liked you because—because you have reconciled us a little to the future. If there are to be a certain number of people like you—à la bonne heure! I am talking for my wife as well as for myself, you see. She speaks for me; why shouldn't I speak for her? We are as united, you know, as the candlestick and the snuffers. Am I assuming too much when I say that I think I have understood from you that your occupations have been—a—commercial? There is a danger in that, you know; but it's the way you have escaped that strikes us. Excuse me if my little compliment seems in execrable taste; fortunately my wife doesn't hear me. What I mean is that you might have been—a—what I was mentioning just now. The whole American world was in a conspiracy to make you so. But you resisted, you have something that saved you. And yet you are so modern, so modern; the most modern man we know! We shall always be delighted to see you again."

I have said that Osmond was in good-humour, and these remarks will give ample evidence of the fact. They were infinitely more personal than he usually cared to be, and if Caspar Goodwood had attended to them more closely he might have thought that the defence of delicacy was in rather odd hands. We may believe, however, that Osmond knew very well what he was about, and that if he chose for once to be a little vulgar, he had an excellent reason for the escapade. Goodwood had only a vague sense that he was laying it on, somehow;