MRS. FARRANT. So far as you've made up your minds? The electoral cat will jump soon.

BLACKBOROUGH. [_A little beaten by such polite cynicism._] Well . . our conservative principles! After all we know what they are. Good-night, Mrs. O'Connell.

AMY O'CONNELL. Good-night.

FARRANT. Your neuralgia better?

AMY O'CONNELL. By fits and starts.

FARRANT. [_Robustly._] Come and play billiards. Horsham and Maconochie started a game. They can neither of them play. We left them working out a theory of angles on bits of paper.

WALTER KENT. Professor Maconochie lured me on to golf yesterday. He doesn't suffer from theories about that.

BLACKBOROUGH. [_With approval._] Started life as a caddie.

WALTER KENT. [_Pulling a wry face._] So he told me after the first hole.

BLACKBOROUGH. What's this, Kent, about Trebell's making you his secretary?

WALTER KENT. He thinks he'll have me.

BLACKBOROUGH. [_Almost reprovingly._] No question of politics?

FARRANT. More intrigue, Blackborough.

WALTER KENT. [_With disarming candour._] The truth is, you see, I haven't any as yet. I was Socialist at Oxford . . but of course that doesn't count. I think I'd better learn my job under the best man I can find . . and who'll have me.

BLACKBOROUGH. [_Gravely._] What does your father say?

WALTER KENT. Oh, as long as Jack will inherit the property in a Tory spirit! My father thinks it my wild oats.

_A Footman has come in._

THE FOOTMAN. Your car is round, sir.

BLACKBOROUGH. Ah! Good-night, Miss Davenport. Good-bye again, Mrs.

Farrant . . a charming week-end.

_He makes a business-like departure_, FARRANT _follows him_.

THE FOOTMAN. A telephone message from Dr. Wedgecroft, ma'am. His thanks; they stopped the express for him at Hitchin and he has reached London quite safely.

MRS. FARRANT. Thank you.

[_The Footman goes out._ MRS. FARRANT _exhales delicately as if the air were a little refined by_ BLACKBOROUGH'S _removal_.]

MRS. FARRANT. Mr. Blackborough and his patent turbines and his gas engines and what not are the motive power of our party nowadays, f.a.n.n.y.

FRANCES TREBELL. Yes, you claim to be steering plutocracy. Do you never wonder if it isn't steering you?

MRS. O'CONNELL, _growing restless, has wandered round the room picking at the books in their cases_.

AMY O'CONNELL. I always like your books, Julia. It's an intellectual distinction to know someone who has read them.

MRS. FARRANT. That's the Communion I choose.

FRANCES TREBELL. Aristocrat . . fastidious aristocrat.

MRS. FARRANT. No, now. Learning's a great leveller.

FRANCES TREBELL. But Julia . . books are quite unreal. D'you think life is a bit like them?

MRS. FARRANT. They bring me into touch with . . Oh, there's nothing more deadening than to be boxed into a set in Society! Speak to a woman outside it . . she doesn't understand your language.

FRANCES TREBELL. And do you think by prattling Hegel with Gilbert Wedgecroft when he comes to physic you--

MRS. FARRANT. [_Joyously._] Excellent physic that is. He never leaves a prescription.

LADY DAVENPORT. Don't you think an aristocracy of brains is the best aristocracy, Miss Trebell?

FRANCES TREBELL. [_With a little more bitterness than the abstraction of the subject demands._] I'm sure it is just as out of touch with humanity as any other . . more so, perhaps. If I were a country I wouldn't be governed by arid intellects.

MRS. FARRANT. Manners, Frances.

FRANCES TREBELL. I'm one myself and I know. They're either dead or dangerous.

GEORGE FARRANT _comes back and goes straight to_ MRS. O'CONNELL.

FARRANT. [_Still robustly._] Billiards, Mrs. O'Connell.

AMY O'CONNELL. [_Declining sweetly._] I think not.

FARRANT. Billiards, Lucy?

LUCY DAVENPORT. [_As robust as he._] Yes, Uncle George. You shall mark while Walter gives me twenty-five and I beat him.

WALTER KENT. [_With a none-of-your-impudence air._] I'll give you ten yards start and race you to the billiard room.

LUCY DAVENPORT. Will you wear my skirt? Oh . . Grandmamma's thinking me vulgar.

LADY DAVENPORT. [_Without prejudice._] Why, my dear, freedom of limb is worth having . . and perhaps it fits better with freedom of tongue.

FARRANT. [_In the proper avuncular tone._] I'll play you both . . and I'd race you both if you weren't so disgracefully young.

AMY O'CONNELL _has reached an open window_.

AMY O'CONNELL. I shall go for a walk with my neuralgia.