Uneasy Money by P. G. Wodehouse

On a westbound omnibus Claire Fenwick sat and raged silently in the June sunshine. She was furious. What right had Lord Dawlish to look down his nose and murmur, "Noblesse oblige" when she asked him a question, as if she had suggested that he should commit some crime? It was the patronizing way he had said it that infuriated her, as if he were a superior being of some kind, governed by codes which she could not be expected to understand. Everybody nowadays did the sort of things she suggested, so what was the good of looking shocked and saying, "Noblesse oblige? "

The omnibus rolled on. It passed through Piccadilly, full of opulent-looking people who could afford taxis and private cars. It halted long enough at the foot of Sloane Street to enable Claire to look down a vista of desirable residences without a single five-roomed flat among them. Then it turned up toward Kensington Gardens, when every revolution of the wheels took it farther from civilization and nearer London's Harlem, those realms of outer darkness where the genteelly poor live on top of one another in layers.