“Unsophisticated soul!” he thought. “Why has cruel fate brought you amongst us? Tell me,” he murmured, “is it true that you have Von Holstein’s cook?” If she had, he would wait and take her to the supper-tables; if she had not, he would at once leave her to her fate. “Meaning the German Ambassador’s, sir?” she replied. “Yes, we have.” “Ah!” He decided to take her to supper. “But I can’t say as we like him.” “What?” It was like hearing anybody say they did not like Dante, or Jean de Reszké, or truffles, or comet-claret. “No, sir, we don’t,” she answered; “he doesn’t cook himself at all.” “Of course he doesn’t! You might as well say that a pianist should make the piano he plays on, and shoot an elephant to get ivory for his keys! Richemont--it is Richemont whom you have?--is a surpassing artist.” “’Tis easy to be an artist, sir, if you set a lot of people working and send up their work in your name,” said Margaret Massarene. “He don’t do naught all day--the under-cooks say so--and he gets more’n a thousand guineas a year; and he called Mr. Massarene an imbecile because he wouldn’t eat snails! Now I put it to you, sir, what’s the use of being able to pay for the fat of the land if you’re to put up with hodmedods out of the hedges?” Gwyllian laughed so delightedly that the two terrible dowagers turned to glance at him with a Medusan frown. “After all,” he thought, “one does get a great deal more fun out of this kind of people than one ever gets out of one’s own.” And he took her in to supper, and made himself exceedingly pleasant. He was one of those wise persons who if they cannot be pleasant with others are nothing at all. Under the gentle exhilaration produced by a little sparkling wine, Mrs. Massarene amused him infinitely, and he cleverly extracted from her more about life in Dakota than the rest of London had learned in a year; he was even made acquainted with the oil-stove and the linen-wringer. “What a nice kind man! How interested he do seem!” she thought, poor creature, unconscious that the oil-stove and the linen-wringer would make the diversion of a dozen dinner-tables, manipulated with that skill at mimicry which was one of Daddy Gwyllian’s social attractions. Her husband saw her from a distance, and divined that she was being “drawn”; but he was powerless. He was in waiting on an aunt of Lady Kenilworth’s, a very high and mighty person with aquiline features and an immense appetite. It was her garrulous stupidity and her clumsy ingenuousness which made him hate her with a hate which deepened every day. Why had he hung such a millstone round his neck when he had been a farm-lad in County Down? Her good and kindly qualities, her natural sincerity, simplicity, and good nature were all homely instincts, no more wanted in her new life than a pail of fresh milk was wanted at one of the grand dinners at Harrenden House.