held together by a one-pin despotism which might abdicate its
functions at any moment; it's really a relief to see her
reach her chair in safety. Then there are the people who
troop in with an-unpleasant-duty-to-perform air, as if they
were angels of Death entering a plague city. You see that
type of Briton very much in hotels abroad. And nowadays
there are always the Johannesbourgeois, who bring a Cape-to-
Cairo atmosphere with them--what may be called the Rand
Manner, I suppose."

"Talking about hotels abroad," said the Duchess, "I am
preparing notes for a lecture at the Club on the educational
effects of modern travel, dealing chiefly with the moral side
of the question. I was talking to Lady Beauwhistle's aunt
the other day--she's just come back from Paris, you know.
Such a sweet woman" -

"And so silly. In these days of the over-education of women
she's quite refreshing. They say some people went through
the siege of Paris without knowing that France and Germany
were at war; but the Beauwhistle aunt is credited with having
passed the whole winter in Paris under the impression that
the Humberts were a kind of bicycle . . . Isn't there a
bishop or somebody who believes we shall meet all the animals
we have known on earth in another world? How frightfully
embarrassing to meet a whole shoal of whitebait you had last
known at Prince's! I'm sure in my nervousness I should talk
of nothing but lemons. Still, I daresay they would be quite
as offended if one hadn't eaten them. I know if I were
served up at a cannibal feast I should be dreadfully annoyed