was rather more like a curtsy than a bow. It appeared that he knew the duchess quite well . . . as he knew everybody in the world quite well. He smiled at her and then became just suitably grave. Then he began to speak an admirable, very old-fashioned French with an atrocious English accent. Sylvia had no idea that he knew a word of the language—that she herself knew very well indeed. She said to herself that upon. her word it was like hearing Chateaubriand talk—if Chateaubriand had been brought up in an English hunting country. . . . Of course Christopher would cultivate an English accent: to show that he was an English county gentleman. And he would speak correctly—to show that an English Tory can do anything in the world if he wants to. . . .
The British faces in the room looked blank: the French faces turned electrically upon him. Sylvia said:
"Who would have thought . . . ?" The duchess jumped to her feet and took Christopher's arm. She sailed with him imperiously past the general and past Sylvia. She was saying that that was just what she would have expected of a milor Anglais . . . Avec un spleen tel que vous l'avez!
Christopher, in short, had told the duchess that as his family owned almost the largest stretch of hot-house coal-burning land in England and her family the largest stretch of hothouses in the sister-country of France, what could they do better than make an alliance? He would instruct his brother's manager to see that the duchess was supplied for the duration of hostilities and as long after as she pleased with all the coal needed for her glass at the pit-head prices of the Middlesbrough-Cleveland district as the prices were
