But to pick up a Norwegian
peasant and set her up as a sort of moral finger-post to society--and
then to go and compromise himself with Violet Vere--that's a kind of
thing I _can't_ stand! I'd rather be anything in the world than a
humbug!"
Many people desire to be something they are not, and her ladyship quite
unconsciously echoed this rather general sentiment. She was, without
knowing it, such an adept in society humbug, that she even humbugged
herself. She betrayed herself as she betrayed others, and told little
soothing lies to her own conscience as she told them to her friends.
There are plenty of women like her,--women of pleasant courtesy and
fashion, to whom truth is mere coarseness,--and with whom polite lying
passes for perfect breeding. She was not aware, as she was driven along
Park Lane to her own residence, that she carried with her on the box of
her brougham a private detective in the person of Briggs. Perched
stiffly on his seat, with arms tightly folded, this respectable retainer
was quite absorbed in meditation, so much so that he exchanged not a
word with his friend, the coachman, beside him.
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