“The vices are divinely comic,” continued Lady Manby, looking every moment more like a teapot. “I think it’s such a mercy. Fancy what a lot of fun we should lose if there were no drunkards, for instance!” Lady Cardington looked shocked. “The virtues are often more comic than the vices,” said Mrs. Trent, with calm authority. “Dramatists know that. Think of the dozens of good farces whose foundation is supreme respectability in contact with the wicked world.” “I didn’t know anyone called respectability a virtue,” cried Sally Perceval. “Oh, all the English do in their hearts,” said Mrs. Wolfstein. “Pimpernel, are you Yankees as bad?” Miss Schley was eating _sole a la Colbert_ with her eyes on her plate. She ate very slowly and took tiny morsels. Now she looked up. “We’re pretty respectable over in America, I suppose,” she drawled. “Why not? What harm does it do anyway?” “Well, it limits the inventive faculties for one thing. If one is strictly respectable life is plain sailing.” “Oh, life is never that,” said Mrs. Trent, “for women.” Lady Cardington seemed touched by this remark. “Never, never,” she said in her curious voice--a voice in which tears seemed for ever to be lingering. “We women are always near the rocks.” “Or on them,” said Mrs. Trent, thinking doubtless of the two husbands she had divorced. “I like a good shipwreck,” exclaimed Miss Burns in a loud tenor voice. “I was in two before I was thirty, one off Hayti and one off Java, and I enjoyed them both thoroughly. They wake folks up and make them show their mettle.” “It’s always dangerous to speak figuratively if she’s anywhere about,” murmured Mrs. Wolfstein to Lady Holme. “She’ll talk about lowering boats and life-preservers now till the end of lunch.” Lady Holme started. She had not been listening to the conversation but had been looking at Miss Schley. She had noticed instantly the effect created in the room by the actress’s presence in it. The magic of a name flits, like a migratory bird, across the Atlantic. Numbers of the youthful loungers of London had been waiting impatiently during the last weeks for the arrival of this pale and demure star. Now that she had come their interest in her was keen. Her peculiar reputation for ingeniously tricking Mrs. Bowdler, secretary to Mrs. Grundy, rendered her very piquant, and this piquancy was increased by her ostentatiously vestal appearance. Lady Holme was sometimes clairvoyante. At this moment every nerve in her body seemed telling her that the silent girl, who sat there nibbling her lunch composedly, was going to be the rage in London. It did not matter at all whether she had talent or not. Lady Holme saw that directly, as she glanced from one little table to another at the observant, whispering men. She felt angry with Miss Schley for resembling her in colouring, for resembling her in another respect--capacity for remaining calmly silent in the midst of fashionable chatterboxes.