MARGARET. That he wasn't going to enter Badegast for the Ladies' Plate. CLEMENT. Oh, you mustn't believe everything Szigrati tells you. He's spreading the report that Badegast won't run just in order that the odds may be longer. MARGARET. Why, that's just like speculation. CLEMENT. Well, don't you suppose we've got any speculators among us? For many men the whole thing is a business. Do you suppose a man like Szigrati has the slightest feeling for sport? He might just as well be on the stock exchange. But for the matter of that, as far as Badegast is concerned, people might well lay a hundred to one against him. MARGARET. Oh? I thought he looked splendid this morning. CLEMENT. Oh, she's seen Badegast too! MARGARET. To be sure--didn't Butters give him a gallop this morning after Busserl? CLEMENT. But Butters doesn't ride for Szigrati. That must have been a stable-boy. Well, anyhow, Badegast may look as splendid as you like, it makes no difference--he's no good. Ah, Margaret, with your brains you'll soon learn to distinguish real greatness from false. It's really incredible, the quickness with which you've already--what shall I say?--initiated yourself into all these things--it surpasses my boldest expectations. MARGARET (annoyed). Why does it surpass your expectations? You know very well that all these things are not so new to me. Some very good people used to visit my parents' house--Count Libowski and various others; and also at my husband's ... CLEMENT. Oh, of course--I know ... At bottom I've really got nothing against the cotton business. MARGARET. What has it to do with my personal views that my husband had a cotton factory? I always continued my education in my own fashion. But let's not talk any further about those days--they're far enough away, thank God! CLEMENT. But there are others that are nearer. MARGARET. To be sure. But what does that mean? CLEMENT. Oh, I only mean that in your Munich surroundings you can't have heard much of sporting matters, as far as I am able to judge. MARGARET. I wish you'd stop reproaching me with the surroundings in which you learned to know me. CLEMENT. Reproaching you? There can't be any question of that. But it has always been and still is incomprehensible to me how you got in with those people. MARGARET. You talk exactly as if they had been a gang of criminals! CLEMENT. Child, I give you my word, there were some of them that looked exactly like highway-robbers. What I can't understand is how you, with your well-developed sense of ... Well, I won't say anything more than your taste for ... cleanliness and nice perfumes ... could bear living among those people, sitting down at the table with them. MARGARET (smiling). Didn't you do it too?