It must be hard to be exclusively social and entirely friendless at the same time. - Edward St Aubyn

What is a strain is being forced into the lobster pot of good behaviour while being forced to sing its praises.

Mrs Hickmann was inclined to forgive Patrick the apparent purposelessness of his life and the sinister pallor of his complexion, when she considered that he has an income of one hundred thousand pounds a year, and came from a family which, although it had done nothing since, had seen the Norman invasion from the winning side.

Looks didn’t last forever and she wasn’t ready for religion yet. Money was kind of a good compromise, staked up somewhere between cosmetics and eternity.