Mrs. Dalloway

the rest were at his feet.

“The Whitbreads?” he could hear her saying. “Who are the Whitbreads?
Coal merchants. Respectable tradespeople.”

Hugh she detested for some reason. He thought of nothing but his own
appearance, she said. He ought to have been a Duke. He would be certain
to marry one of the Royal Princesses. And of course Hugh had the most
extraordinary, the most natural, the most sublime respect for the
British aristocracy of any human being he had ever come across. Even
Clarissa had to own that. Oh, but he was such a dear, so unselfish,
gave up shooting to please his old mother--remembered his aunts’
birthdays, and so on.

Sally, to do her justice, saw through all that. One of the things he
remembered best was an argument one Sunday morning at Bourton about
women’s rights (that antediluvian topic), when Sally suddenly lost
her temper, flared up, and told Hugh that he represented all that
was most detestable in British middle-class life. She told him that
she considered him responsible for the state of “those poor girls in
Piccadilly”--Hugh, the perfect gentleman, poor Hugh!--never did a man
look more horrified! She did it on purpose she said afterwards (for