VENABLES. Well, not you, but your husband. I have known few men make
a worse beginning in the House. He had the most atrocious bow-wow
public-park manner---

COMTESSE. I remember that manner!

MAGGIE. No, he hadn't.

VENABLES [soothingly]. At first. But by his second session he had
shed all that, and he is now a pleasure to listen to. By the way,
Comtesse, have you found any dark intention in that?

COMTESSE. You wanted to know whether he talks over these matter with
his wife; and she has told you that he does not.

MAGGIE [indignantly]. I haven't said a word about it, have I?

VENABLES. Not a word. Then, again, I admire him for his impromptu
speeches.

MAGGIE. What is impromptu?

VENABLES. Unprepared. They have contained some grave blunders not so
much of judgment as of taste---

MAGGIE [hotly]. _I_ don't think so.

VENABLES. Pardon me. But he has righted himself subsequently in the
neatest way. I have always found that the man whose second thoughts