“Otto wishes,” continued the shameless Edelgard, reckless of the private hours with me ahead, “to be introduced to your--to Mrs.--Mrs.----” “Raggett,” supplied the pastor. And I would certainly have been dragged up then and there to the round red ghost at the top of the room while Edelgard, no doubt, triumphed in the background, if it had not itself come to the rescue by striking up another tune on its fiddle. “Presently,” said the pastor, now become crystallized for me into Raggett. “Presently. Then with pleasure.” And his glassy eye, fixed on mine, had little of pleasure in it. At this point Edelgard danced away with Jellaby from under my very nose. I made an instinctive movement toward the slender figure alone in the corner, but even as I moved a half-grown boy secured her and hurried her off among the dancers. Looking round, I saw no one else I could go and talk to; even Mrs. Menzies-Legh was not available. There was nothing for it, therefore, but unadulterated Raggett. “It is nice,” observed this person, watching the dancers--he had a hooky profile as well as a glassy eye--“to see young people enjoying themselves.” I bowed, determined to keep within the limits of strict iciness; but as Jellaby and my wife whirled past I could not forbear adding: “Especially when the young people are so mature that they are fully aware of the extent of their own enjoyment.” “Yes,” said he; without, however, any real responsiveness. “It is only,” said I, “when a woman is mature, and more than mature, that she begins to enjoy being young.” “Yes,” said he; still with no real responsiveness. “You may possibly,” said I, nettled by this indifference, “regard that as a paradox.” “No,” said he. “It is, however,” said I more loudly, “not one.” “No,” said he. “It is on the contrary,” said I still louder, “a rather subtle but undeniable truth.” “Yes,” said he; and I then perceived that he was not listening. I do not know what my hearers feel, but I fancy they feel with me that when a gentleman of birth and position is amiable enough to talk to a person of neither it is particularly galling to discover that that person is so unable to grasp the true aspect of the situation as to neglect even to follow the conversation. Good breeding (as I have before remarked, a great hinderer) prevents one’s explaining who one is and emphasizing who the other person is and doing then and there a sum of subtraction between one’s own value and his and offering him the result for his closer inspection, so what is one to do? Stiffen and go dumb, I suppose. Good breeding allows no more. Alas, there are many and heavy drawbacks to being a gentleman. Raggett had evidently not been listening to a word I said, for after his last abstracted “Yes,” he suddenly turned the glassiness of his eye full upon me. “I did not know,” he said, “when I saw you in church----”