“Ah! that was the British cant!” retorted Lionel. “Let us hail the storm which knocked that false modesty out of us all.”
“My dear Lady Carey,” resumed Vane, “it is not a question of decency at present, but a matter of artistic feeling. I should propose organising the thing in this way: Dukes would have a red colour thrown over their lordly forms; Earls and Barons a blue shade; Baronets, yellow; commoners would have no colour, but the members of the Royal Family would have red and yellow stripes. Ladies would naturally have their shades too, according to their rank: Duchesses, pink; Countesses, pale green; and so on. This is a rough sketch of course.”
“I quite see what you mean, Mr Vane,” remarked Danford; a sort of mirage peerage.
Montagu Vane glanced up at the remark, and curtly replied, “It would at all events acquaint the public with the social standing of the person whom he elbowed in the street, and differentiate a peer of the realm from a—social guide.”
“Or a—_dilettante_,” mischievously added Danford.
“I should have thought that what was more important than finding out in what way one man was differentiated from another, was to discover the points in which they were alike,” said Lionel. “You are catching at a straw, my dear Montagu; your system is shallow, and you will never persuade the Upper Ten of its practicableness. For my part, I plainly refuse to envelop my carcass with a Loie Fuller’s sidelight.”
“Your decision is law amongst your peers, my lord,” and Danford bowed.
“We had better start a Society for the obtaining of accurately reported news. Newspapers have disappeared, and with them the necessity has died out for falsifying the truth,” said Lionel.
“I do protest,” interrupted Sinclair, “against plain facts being handed to me by unimaginative people who pass on an ungarnished piece of news without as much as adding one poor little adjective. It is too brutally literal.”
“It all comes, as I was saying,” apologetically remarked Vane, “from a complete lack of artistic feeling.”
“There you are right,” hurriedly said Lionel; “for Parliament is broken up from the lack of dramatic power in its members, and militarism will inevitably die out with the disappearance of military distinctions.”