Page:The Semi-detached House.djvu/90

 'I thought you knew Lady Chester and her sister, at least, by sight," said Mrs. Hopkinson, as sharply as her intense good humour would allow.

"Lady Chester and her sister!" screamed the Baroness, falling back into her chair, and turning as pale as was possible under the amount of rouge she wore. "Good heavens! Mrs. Hopkinson, why did not you name them? why did you not present them to me? I should have been too happy to shew them every attention for the sake of our mutual friends the Rothschilds, in fact, I really wished to make Lady Chester's acquaintance, and I was scarcely civil, I am afraid."

"That I can answer for," said Baron Moses, who was in ecstacies with his mother's discomfiture, "civility was not your forte just at the moment. I," he added consequentially, "who can afford to follow my very vivid perceptions of what pleases mon goût, happily paid them every attention. I saw at once that they were intensely comme il faut." He sunk the fact of having offered to procure