"Very," said Lydia. "I hope Mrs. Hoskyn's guests are all familiar
with his style. Otherwise they must find him a little startling."

"Yes," said Mrs. Hoskyn, beginning to wonder whether Cashel could be
some well-known eccentric genius. "He is very odd. I hope Mr. Webber
is not offended."

"He is the less pleased as he was in the wrong," said Lydia.
"Intolerant refusal to listen to an opponent is a species of
violence that has no business in such a representative
nineteenth-century drawing-room as yours, Mrs. Hoskyn. There was a
fitness in rebuking it by skilled physical violence. Consider the
prodigious tact of it, too! One gentleman knocks another half-way
across a crowded room, and yet no one is scandalized."

"You see, Mrs. Hoskyn, the general verdict is 'Served him right,'"
said Lord Worthington.

"With a rider to the effect that both gentlemen displayed complete
indifference to the comfort of their hostess," said Lydia. "However,
men so rarely sacrifice their manners to their minds that it would
be a pity to blame them. You do not encourage conventionality, Mrs.
Hoskyn?"

"I encourage good manners, though certainly not conventional
manners."

"And you think there is a difference?"