“But my hero would have had to change his name if he had claimed the peerage,” said Rose.

“Yes, but you see the title was his right name,” said Father Payne; “he was only masquerading as a commoner, you must remember.  Why I should value an ancient peerage is because I think it might improve my manners.”

“Impossible!” said Vincent.

“Thank you,” said Father Payne.  “Yes, my manners are very good for a commoner—­but I should like to be a little more in the grand style.  I should like to be able to look long at a person, who said something of which I disapproved, and then change the subject.  That would be fine!  But I daren’t do that now.  Now I have to argue.  Do you remember in Daniel Deronda, Grandcourt’s habit of looking stonily at smiling persons.  I have often envied that!  Whereas my chief function in life is looking smilingly at stony persons, and that’s very bourgeois.”

“We must show more animation,” said Barthrop to his neighbour.

“I mean it!” said Father Payne, “but come, I won’t be personal!  Seriously, you know, the one thing I have admired in the very few great people I have ever met is the absence of embarrassment.  They don’t need to explain who they are, they haven’t got to preface their statements of opinion by fragments of autobiography, to show their right to speak.  It is convenient to feel that if people don’t know who you are, they will feel slightly foolish afterwards when they discover, like the man who shook hands warmly with Queen Victoria, and said, “I know the face quite well, but I can’t put a name to it.”  It did not show any pride of birth in the Queen to be extremely amused by the incident.  But even more than that I admire the case which people of that sort get by having had, from childhood onwards, to meet all sorts of persons, and to behave themselves, and to see that people do not feel shy or uncomfortable.  I sometimes go about the village simply teeming with benevolence, and I pass some one, and can’t think of anything to say.  If I had the great manner, I should say, “Why, Tommy, is that you?” or some such human signal, which would not mean anything in particular, but would after all express exactly what is in my mind.  But I can’t just do that.  I rack my brains for an appropriate remark, because I am bourgeois, and have not the point of honour, as the French say.  And by the time I have elaborated it, Tommy is gone, and Jack is passing, and I begin elaborating again; whereas I should simply add, if I were aristocratic, ‘And that’s you, Jack, isn’t it?’ That’s the way to talk.”

We all laughed; and Barthrop said, “Well, I must say, Father, that I have often envied you your power of saying something to everyone.”