Barty lunched at the König’s Hotel table d’hôte, which was crowded, principally with English people, none of whom he had ever met or heard of. But from these he heard a good deal of the Royces and Captain Graham-Reece and Mr. Beresford Duff, and other smart people who lived in furnished houses or expensive apartments away from the rest of the world, and were objects of general interest and curiosity among the smaller British fry.
Riffrath was a microcosm of English society, from the lower middle class upwards, with all its respectabilities and incompatibilities and disabilities—its narrownesses and meannesses and snobbishnesses, its gossipings and backbitings and toadyings and snubbings—delicate little social things of England that foreigners don’t understand!
The sensation of the hour w
