The host soon turned back from duty to pleasure, leaving Lady Coltshurst to Lord Charles Montfitchet.  The conversation turned upon types.

Types were not things of chance, Francis Markrute affirmed; if one could look back far enough there was always a reason for them.

“People are so extremely unthinking about such a number of interesting things, Lady Ethelrida,” he said, “their speculative faculties seem only to be able to roam into cut and dried channels.  We have had great scientists like Darwin investigating our origin, and among the Germans there are several who study the atavism of races, but in general even educated people are perfectly ignorant upon the subject, and they expect little Tommy Jones and Katie Robinson, or Jacques Dubois and Marie Blanc, to have the same instincts as your cousin, Lord Tancred, and you, for instance.  Whatever individual you are dealing with, you should endeavor to understand his original group.  In moments of great excitement when all acquired control is in abeyance the individual always returns to the natural action of his group.”

“How interesting!” said Lady Ethelrida.  “Let us look round the table and decide to what particular group each one of us belongs.”

“Most of you are from the same group,” he said meditatively.  “Eliminating myself and my niece, Sir James Danvers has perhaps had the most intermixtures.”

“Yes,” said Lady Ethelrida, and she laughed.  “Jimmy’s grandmother was the daughter of a very rich Manchester cotton spinner; that is what gives him his sound common sense.  I am afraid Tristram and the rest of us except Lord Coltshurst have not had anything sensible like that in us for hundreds of years, so what would be your speculation as to the action of our group?”

“That you would have high courage and fine senses, and highly-strung, nervous force, and chivalry and good taste, and broad and noble aims in the higher half and that in the lower portion you would run to the decadence of all those things—­the fine turned to vices—­yet even so I would not look for vulgarity, or bad taste, or cowardice in any of you.”

“No,” said Lady Ethelrida—­“I hope not.  Then, according to your reasoning it is very unjust of us when we say, as perhaps you have heard it said, that Lady Darrowood is to blame when she is noisy and assertive and treats Lord Darrowood with bad taste?”

“Certainly—­she only does those things when she is excited and has gone back to her group.  When she is under her proper control she plays the part of an English marchioness very well.  It is the prerogative of a new race to be able to play a part; the result of the cunning and strength which have been required of the immediate forbears in order to live at all under unfavorable conditions.  Now, had her father been a Deptford ox-slaughterer instead of a Chicago pig-sticker she could never have risen to the role of a marchioness at all.  This is no new country; it does not need nor comprehend bluff, and so produces no such type as Lady Darrowood.”