Mrs. Dalloway

which either Lovelace or Herrick--she never read a word of poetry
herself, but so the story ran--had sat under. Better wait to put before
them the question that bothered her (about making an appeal to the
public; if so, in what terms and so on), better wait until they have
had their coffee, Lady Bruton thought; and so laid the carnations down
beside her plate.

“How’s Clarissa?” she asked abruptly.

Clarissa always said that Lady Bruton did not like her. Indeed, Lady
Bruton had the reputation of being more interested in politics than
people; of talking like a man; of having had a finger in some notorious
intrigue of the eighties, which was now beginning to be mentioned
in memoirs. Certainly there was an alcove in her drawing-room, and
a table in that alcove, and a photograph upon that table of General
Sir Talbot Moore, now deceased, who had written there (one evening in
the eighties) in Lady Bruton’s presence, with her cognisance, perhaps
advice, a telegram ordering the British troops to advance upon an
historical occasion. (She kept the pen and told the story.) Thus, when
she said in her offhand way “How’s Clarissa?” husbands had difficulty
in persuading their wives and indeed, however devoted, were secretly