Toryism in those days was Margaret's quite religious faith in the Liberals. I realised that slowly and with a mild astonishment. It set me, indeed, even then questioning my own change of opinion. We came at last incidentally, as our way was, to an exchange of views. It was as nearly a quarrel as we had before I came over to the Conservative side. It was at Champneys, and I think during the same visit that witnessed my exploration of Lady Forthundred. It arose indirectly, I think, out of some comments of mine upon our fellow-guests, but it is one of those memories of which the scene and quality remain more vivid than the things said, a memory without any very definite beginning or end. It was afternoon, in the pause between tea and the dressing bell, and we were in Margaret's big silver-adorned, chintz-bright room, looking out on the trim Italian garden.... Yes, the beginning of it has escaped me altogether, but I remember it as an odd exceptional little wrangle.
At first we seem to have split upon the moral quality of the aristocracy, and I had an odd sense that in some way too feminine for me to understand our hostess had aggrieved her. She said, I know, that Champneys distressed her; made her “eager for work and reality again.”
“But aren't these people real?”
“They're so superficial, so extravagant!”
I said I was not shocked by their unreality. They seemed the least affected people I had ever met. “And are they really so extravagant?” I asked, and put it to her that her dresses cost quite as much as any other woman's in the house.
“It's not only their dresses,” Margaret parried. “It's the scale and spirit of things.”