‘But are we then utterly mixed up with tailors?’ exclaimed Mrs. Barrington.

‘Well, those are the facts,’ said Mr. George.

The wine made the young squire talkative.  It is my belief that his suspicions were not awake at that moment, and that, like any other young country squire, having got a subject he could talk on, he did not care to discontinue it.  The Countess was past the effort to attempt to stop him.  She had work enough to keep her smile in the right place.

Every dinner may be said to have its special topic, just as every age has its marked reputation.  They are put up twice or thrice, and have to contend with minor lights, and to swallow them, and then they command the tongues of men and flow uninterruptedly.  So it was with the great Mel upon this occasion.  Curiosity was aroused about him.  Aunt Bel agreed with Lady Jocelyn that she would have liked to know the mighty tailor.  Mrs. Shorne but very imperceptibly protested against the notion, and from one to another it ran.  His Grace of Belfield expressed positive approval of Mel as one of the old school.

‘Si ce n’est pas le gentilhomme, au moins, c’est le gentilhomme manque,’ said Lady Jocelyn.  ’He is to be regretted, Duke.  You are right.  The stuff was in him, but the Fates were unkind.  I stretch out my hand to the pauvre diable.’

’I think one learns more from the mock magnifico than from anything else,’ observed his Grace.

’When the lion saw the donkey in his own royal skin, said Aunt Bel, ’add the rhyme at your discretion—­he was a wiser lion, that’s all.’

‘And the ape that strives to copy one—­he’s an animal of judgement,’ said Lady Jocelyn.  ’We will be tolerant to the tailor, and the Countess must not set us down as a nation of shopkeepers:  philosophically tolerant.’

The Countess started, and ran a little broken ‘Oh!’ affably out of her throat, dipped her lips to her tablenapkin, and resumed her smile.

‘Yes,’ pursued her ladyship; ’old Mel stamps the age gone by.  The gallant adventurer tied to his shop!  Alternate footman and marquis, out of intermediate tailor!  Isn’t there something fine in his buffoon imitation of the real thing?  I feel already that old Mel belongs to me.  Where is the great man buried?  Where have they, set the funeral brass that holds his mighty ashes?’

Lady Jocelyn’s humour was fully entered into by the men.  The women smiled vacantly, and had a common thought that it was ill-bred of her to hold forth in that way at table, and unfeminine of any woman to speak continuously anywhere.

‘Oh, come!’ cried Mr. George, who saw his own subject snapped away from him by sheer cleverness; ’old Mel wasn’t only a buffoon, my lady, you know.  Old Mel had his qualities.  He was as much a “no-nonsense” fellow, in his way, as a magistrate, or a minister.’

‘Or a king, or a constable,’ Aunt Bel helped his illustration.