His Grace — page 145: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

HIS GRACE. 139 tiality with which she alternately soothed and urged on the combatants. Still this was not so amusing but that I was sin- cerely glad to see her and her aunt leave the room. Rows are always to be deprecated, and they are more especially so when one’s own side seems likely to come out of them with loss of breath and loss of glory. We cooled down and grew very distant and polite after the ladies had quitted us; nor was it long before we fol- lowed them. I don’t know what took place then be- tween the rivals and the rather unworthy subject of their rivalry. Whatever Nora may say, I don’t believe that Miss St. George was a stupid woman, and I have the best of reasons for conjecturing that she spent a pleasant evening. However, I can’t uphold my con- jecture by any report of personal observations ; for no sooner had I entered the drawing-room than I was im- peratively beckoned to seat myself beside Lady Dev- erell, who, it appeared, had not yet done with me. “Vou were pleased to rebuke me before dinner,” she began. ‘ You need not apologize for it.” “T wasn’t going to apologize,” I interpolated meekly. “Vou would have done so if I had given you to under- stand that I expected it, and you would have been right to do so, because you certainly expressed your- self in an uncalled-for and impertinent manner. But I don’t ask you to apologize, nor do I quarrel with you for standing up for your friend. Whether you have chosen your friend wisely time will show. I may be allowed to have my own opinion as to that. But what I was going to say to you when we were interrupted, and what my conscience compels me to say to you now, is that you have madea very great—I fear I might almost Gomichboo m